For
Matt Berry’s newest album, The Blue Elephant, he’s gone and popped the
lid off of a veritable Pandora’s box of 1960s psychedelic influences and
turned himself into the proverbial “kid in a candy store”, filling his
basket with a plethora of tricks and treats, threatening to over-indulge
at every turn, yet somehow managing to keep it all from becoming a
mess. The neatest trick here is that he’s managed to invoke the essence
of that sound without resorting to overt parody or homage. It’s all
very authentic sounding from the brutal stereo panning to the swirls of
phaser that periodically send the mix into the stratosphere. The man
simply knows the ins and outs of what he’s doing with this style and has
managed to expertly craft this album to create a transcendent journey
that swirls, shimmers and seduces while never succumbing to hubris or
arrogance.
It’s a pretty slick maneuver considering the kinds
of characters Berry is famous for and the bravado of the material being
executed. Doing psyche-rock effectively requires a degree of confidence
that isn’t burdened by overt egotism. The magic of this genre is when
you can lose yourself in it and Berry has meticulously fashioned a trip
worthy of the finest state altering substances. To accomplish this,
he’s woven a few different tangential styles together that stretch the
theme just enough to foster the unexpected. As well as the classic
psyche tropes, there are also facets of early 1970s progressive and glam
rock that refract through his musical kaleidoscope, adding to its depth
and range.
The structuring of this album is impressive on just
about every level, beginning with the overall arrangements. There’s a
broad range of dynamic variations, unexpected shifts and intricate
transitions that unfold seemingly spontaneously with organic ease
without sounding contrived or overworked. It’s a very freewheeling
sensibility that instills the album with an innate sense of fun, even
when the lyrical content is somewhat melancholic. You can simply hear
the joy in Berry’s process as he puts this all together. Atop this
prowess for putting things in the right place is an artful palette of
sounds which service this conceptual framework to its maximum potential.
Guitars jangle & fuzz, tremolo modulated keyboards and organ riffs
glide in and out, flutes drift on high and heavily processed voices
find the strangest nooks and crannies to occupy.
While Berry is
responsible for the bulk of everything you hear, including mixing,
engineering and production, there is one other contributor to this
tapestry that deserves special commendation and that is
drummer/percussionist, Craig Blundell, a regular collaborator with
Berry. His performance on this album is the secret sauce that makes all
the magic Matt weaves around him sound fluid and dynamic. Craig’s got
his finger on the pulse of this album from start to finish and the
interplay between him and Matt is some kind of sorcery that leaves me
marveling at how tightly entwined they remain from track to track and
transition to transition.
While there’s a very carefully
contained maximalist approach to the music on this album, lyrically,
Berry has gone in the opposite direction and kept his phrasing down to a
bare minimum. There aren’t any elaborate verses or pronunciations atop
these songs. Mostly the lyrics are suggestive or nearly fragmentary,
leaving room for interpretation or bemusement. When he sings, “It’s a
drag to be set on fire” in Now Disappear, it’s a surreal kind of
implication that is never elaborated upon and merely hangs there in the
breeze of the tune. It’s vocal impressionism, which highlights the
overall painterly quality of the album. It doesn’t feel composed at
all, but rather expressed through brush strokes and the lyrics are there
to give the music just enough contextual grounding to give the listener
a foothold while not tethering them entirely to the earth.
The
world of actors who make music is rife with self-indulgence and musical
careers which should never have left the privacy of hobby land. It’s
very rare that a stage/screen performer is able to muster a convincing
career in music, but Matt Berry is an exception where his talents in
both fields seem to be equally matched. I’ve seen some fans of Berry’s
screen work strain to imagine him as a “serious” musician, but it’s
clear that he’s more than capable of laying claim to both professions
with equal conviction. He’s now got over 20 years and at least a dozen
albums behind him to prove it. This latest may well be his best yet!
