It’s easy to get lost in the deep, haunting voice of Matthew Connor. But it’s easy to realize exactly where you are when you step into his world of songwriting and storytelling.
The Alabama-born, Boston-based crooner first crashed our dance parties in the long-lost 2000s with the synth-pop blazers Provocateur, a glittery ensemble that matched the overhead strobe with sexualized tones and reckless anecdotes for living. But it turned out Connor saved his more cinematic compositions for his solo efforts, ones that extend way past the easy conquests of a 20-something’s night out. His 2014 album Farewell Motel was a sleek, sophisticated brand of lounge-drunk anecdotal-pop, and inside this new world he created, there was more stock placed in what happens behind the emotional human veil than between the skin-doused sheets.
If Connor’s baritone is a portal to his mind, then his mind is a ever-changing city where relationships, encounters, and tales of loneliness play out in broad moonlight.
“The ride home from the club is more interesting to me than the club itself,” Connor says this week, as we catch up with him before his record release party tonight at Once Lounge in Somerville for his new EP, Night After Night. His latest effort finds a broader experimentation of sound from the songwriter and producer, though his calculated grace and eerie ability to transport the listener from the moment of action to the point of reconsideration. Even the new EP’s moniker suggests a bit of repetition, good or bad, and brings to mind that oft-copied Albert Einstein quote about how insanity is the action of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
But it’s never that simple; Connor’s compositions, both musically and lyrically, are as complex a creature as the one’s he sings about, and we figured we’d get him to shine a bit of a black light on just what jumps from his mind to the song. Tonight at Once, he’ll be joined by fellow electronic-minded acts St. Nothing and Orchids for a full-slate of calculated beats and adult treats. Listen to his Night After Night EP below, and go along for the ride.
Michael Marotta: There’s a bit more sonic experimentation in Night After Night, what has inspired this shift?
Matthew Connor: I knew after Farewell Motel I wanted to push into even darker territory and to flex my muscles as a producer a bit, and also to move away from the old-timey crooner persona that I felt had run its course. The idea of doing an EP appealed to me because they’re a great way to take new ideas and techniques on a test run between full-lengths; it almost felt like reintroducing myself to the world, in a way. I’ve always been pretty adventurous in the studio, but this time around I really did want to go for broke and try as many things as possible: what would it sound like if I run this train whistle through a broken guitar amp? Can I manually slow this beat down by sticking my finger in the tape machine? My personal philosophy is that if a mistake sounds good, keep it. Let it take you someplace you weren’t expecting to go.
The scope of sounds here is really impressive, almost Magnetic Fieldsian. What was the musical approach towards the EP?
Ultimately, the lyric and vocal are always the most important to me; every choice I make in terms of arrangement or production has to be made from a place of “What is going to best convey the story of the song?” I tend to think more in visual, filmic terms than musical ones: the song is the script, and the production is the cinematography that brings it to life and sets the mood. When I wrote “Night After Night” I knew I wanted to build an EP around it, and the vibe would be late night in the city, very lonely and alienated, almost underwater. I spent a lot of time doing field recordings of city noises, which are woven throughout the EP. Then it was on to creating sample instruments and picking out synth and drum sounds. Once I have the vibe clearly in my head, everything starts falling into place pretty quickly.
In a previous post, I suggested a shift from the lounge (Farewell Motel) to the nightclub; is this accurate?
Perhaps… I can’t imagine people would much be interested in dancing to any of my music (although there is an amazing remix of “Night After Night” coming out very soon, so stay tuned). I tend to think of the after-party as more my sweet spot. The ride home from the club is more interesting to me than the club itself.
Was there an urge to return to a bit of those Provocateur electronic pop roots?
This question is tricky for me, for several reasons. The thing is that before Provocateur I was studying opera, and before that I was a church organist. My roots have always been kind of all over the place. Also, Farewell Motel was a very electronic record, even though that may not be immediately apparent. I mean, there is nothing live or acoustic about “How Is July Already Over?” — those drums were all programmed and tweaked, just as meticulously as you would program EDM or something, it’s just that the samples I made were more wooden and organic sounding than a typical drum machine. There was a review of Farewell Motel that mentioned my “team of producers,” even though I produced the record myself. I think a lot of times people assume singers are not true, serious musicians. I was trying to make it a bit more obvious on Night After Night that I’m not just a singer, that I am an electronic musician who spends countless hours in a dark room staring at a screen with giant headphones on, twiddling knobs. Opening the EP with an 808 was something of a declaration of intent.
There’s definitely a sense of yearning and passion on the EP (esp. “Scarlet Four O’Clock”); in terms of the songwriting here, what’s the foundation/source of this emotion?
This is going to sound a bit like pleading the fifth, but I don’t really like discussing my personal life or the stories behind my songs. None of my songs are strictly autobiographical at this point; many of them aren’t autobiographical at all (although of course my past experiences continue to shape everything I do). Again, it all comes down to the lyric for me. Once I’ve written a song, everything from there on out, especially the emotion of the performance, is in service of that song.
MATTHEW CONNOR + ST. NOTHING + ORCHIDS :: Thursday, October 20 at ONCE Ballroom, 156 Highland Ave. in Somerville, MA :: 8 p.m., all ages, $10 in advance and $12 at the door :: Facebook event page :: Advance tickets
