Matthew Dear: Black City

Matthew Dear

Label: Ghostly International

Matthew Dear’s Black City slowly and strangely reveals itself, layer by layer, as a representation of a city, one that is not unlike many other major metropolises. It can be dirty, creepy, headache-inducing, sexual, liberating, soothing and a shitload of fun if in the proper mindset. To put it most accurately, it can often all of those things at once, regardless of how bothersome any one of its individual elements may be. There are elements of this city, like my own, that I’d much prefer to be omitted – and Dear himself seemingly understands this as he regularly inserts harsh vocal samples, off-key synth jabs and intoxicated harmonic rambles. To line up those traits in musical terms, Black City can be Black Dice with melody, Nine Inch Nails with playful irony or James Murphy with a few more cocktails and a tab or two of acid. The Texas-bred, Detroit-honed, New York-based Dear, who since the late ’90s has navigated through glitch, minimalist house and murky pop, has found his clearest voice yet. That applies literally just as much as figuratively; Dear’s voice has become more than just an accessory, as it was when he initially introduced it into his tunes, and is now parked somewhere in the Eno/Verlaine neighborhood.

Black City begins with a spare rhythm section plodding along like slow-moving traffic, hinting at a minor key. “I hold my fate in my hands/ I won’t set you back again,” Dear sings before the beat gives way to a few stabs of static and hissing fog. Eventually, the rhythm itself disappears, just leaving Dear’s groggy baritone and the sonic skyline itself. “Honey” gives way to “I Can’t Feel,” a syrupy dance number led by a staccato synth drone. Several of the glitchy quirks that make Black City slightly difficult throughout – chirping organ chords that have just one foot in a puddle of dissonance, off-putting harmonies between Dear and a higher version of himself – are featured within the song. “Little People (Black City)” is the most head-scratching song of the collection, if only because it begins as its most straightforward and accessible. Clocking in at over nine minutes, the song is City’s primary hub, exploring theme after theme after theme as if it were picking apart the brains of each denizen on a crowded sidewalk, with the rhythm chugging along at full force. Most everything about the track, from the poppy bass to the short, meandering melodies, makes for easy comparison to LCD Soundsystem, but here, the tongue is most certainly not in cheek; it is busy taking part in a grimy kiss or sucking down absinthe in a filthy, neon basement. As Dear pleads, “Love me like a clone,” it seems clear that as the themes start to blend together and re-emerge, these little people may have more in common than originally thought when under the tent of the big, black city.

The city’s middle section erupts in some pretty straightforward sexual tension and release, made even clearer with song titles like “Slowdance,” “Soil to Seed” and “You Put a Smell On Me,” in that order (intentionally?). With a little smoothing around the edges, the first of the three could pass for the backbone of a hip-hop jam with its repeatedly sampled panting, although in its present form, it is as slyly sinister, teasing and taunting as slow dances can be. Just the same, if Ke$ha laid down some wacky drunken yelping over the hyperkinetic arpeggios of “You Put a Smell On Me” (maybe the song title of the year), it’d be Top 40 gold, but instead we get Dear lazily asking someone to take a ride in his big black car and then to follow him to his big black house on the big black sea. “Smell” is probably the track most representative of City as a whole, not only because of the musical ingredients at work but also because of its cold, metallic texture that is also presented in the album’s artwork and packaging. It’s arguable whether it’s all too “detached” or not, but cold detachment might be the appropriate tunnel into the city that Dear has so carefully crafted here. {Black City} ultimately reminds that all of the feelings emanated within the city – sexual, paranoid, self-conscious or sweet – are warped and twisted into different rhythms and pitches until it all seems foreign. As he concedes on “Gem,” “All of my sad songs can’t make you change/ They’ll just keep pushing you further away.”