Studio 52 is a community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.
Straight up, Matt Rhoades is one of Boston’s finest pop songwriters. Continually breaking the rock and roll mold of this dirty little town for the past decade, the singer guitarist of CONTACT knows how to permanently lodge a musical earworm deep inside your headspace, balancing human emotion and elements of darkness with the gloss of pop music and its cool pink underbelly. A sonic saga that began with the electro wizardry of “Never Stop” in 2016 and continued last summer with the feverish “Gravekeeper” continues today (August 3) with “Sunset,” an atmospheric mood setter served fresh by a video from 30 Seconds to Mars videographer Justyn Moro.
The clip for “Sunset” was shot down in the cavernous Norwood Space Center south of Boston, and the room is a perfect reflection of the sound of CONTACT: Expansive in certain elements but compact and wound with purpose in others. “Sunset” glides along on a galactic synth loop, aided by the drums and percussion of Austin Bryant; its beginning and end joined together, the kind of song you can spin on a loop without realizing you’ve been playing it over and over for an hour. As the loop spins infinitely, the sun eventually sets.
“Last year, after a breakup and life change, I felt I was faced with an existential crisis,” he says, offering context of the track. “Driven by mounting uncertain titles around music, life, money, and friends, panic attacks became an unwelcome thing again. Self medicating, I found myself walking alone one night at 2 a.m. downtown. A piano melody I wrote on loop played in headphones, and I was singing a phrase over and over again: ‘I see the dark horizon. I think the sun is setting now.'”
The trick is believing it will rise again. Listen to “Sunset” below via the video or on Spotify.