Album Review: Bunny by Matthew Dear

Imagine an octopus: agile, stealthy, colors in flux. Now imagine the ink spreading out, the black fog of the disappearing act. Over the past 19 years, Matthew Dear has been a little like that cephalopod, flitting between aliases and sounds--bristly minimal house, thundering peak-time techno, shape-shifting electronic pop. On 2007's Asa Breed, he reinvented himself as an unconventional singer-songwriter and black-hearted crooner; his voice has been his ink ever since.

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The album opens with "Bunny's Dream", which lulls the listener into a false sense of ease. It's warm, relaxed and generally subdued before building to a decidedly odd crescendo of samples and echoes. Dear's sense of humour - he loves a bait-and-switch - appears again on "Calling", which does the same trick (quiet for a while, then aggressive), only to diminished returns.

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Matthew Dear's sixth album and long-awaited comeback under his eponymous alias is called Bunny, about which he says: "Bunnies are cute. Bunnies are weird. They're soft. They're sexy. They're lucky. They wildly procreate. They trick hunters, but get tricked by turtles. They lead you down holes ….

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Matthew Dear's sixth studio album under his own name places a greater focus on his pop and singer/songwriter impulses than any of his previous works. As sprawling and ambitious as his other long-players, Bunny features some of his most forthright songwriting and catchiest hooks, yet there's still plenty of strangeness and left turns to wrap one's head around. Opener "Bunny's Dream" is a feverish seven-minute montage of scattered voices, atmospheric guitar licks, fuzzy bass, and rippling arpeggios, all framed by a galloping, somewhat sticky beat.

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While it's surely mere happenstance that this record is called Bunny, with a track titled "Echo," but one can't help but think that this sounds like a modern rendition of Echo and the Bunnymen at times — or at the very least has that same '80s sheen to it. This solely comes from Matthew Dear's vocals, which have that pained patience of a bygone era. His singing is what divides a lot of people, but it's also what sets him apart; even though he hasn't released anything in six years, there still aren't many who are doing what Dear does ….

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Matthew Dear has assumed many forms over the years, known as DJ, dance-music producer, experimental pop artist, music maker and father, among the thick of characterizations. His fifth studio album 'Bunny' - out now on Ghostly International and it plays like a portrait of all that the man behind the music stands for. Writing, producing and mixing all of his own work, Matthew Dear chases experimental themes, loops, and interludes of eccentric bass lines and multifaceted melodies in this new collection.

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M atthew Dear doesn't call himself King Chameleon lightly. The Texan-born producer, DJ, sometime University of Michigan lecturer and leftfield electronic artist has spent almost 20 years operating under a range of pseudonyms - Audion, Jabberjaw and False - and rifling through genres like a sock drawer. The fifth album under his own name is no different, but mostly he channels an eclectic range of loosely post-punk-era styles into heavy electronics.

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