Don’t let the title fool you — Shane Dylan’s new album A Star or a Lonely Dreamer isn’t lonely at all. It’s large. It’s lived in. And it’s the sonic equivalent of musicians constantly bumping elbows at a crowded artist colony.
Playing the roles of jazz pianist, producer, and composer, Dylan uses A Star or a Lonely Dreamer to arrange a new constellation of Boston talent, tracing connections between a dozen rappers, vocalists, and poets. Artists like Tashawn Taylor, Red Shaydez, Kofi Lost, and Amanda Shea congregate on the album’s silky 10 tracks, instructed by Dylan to do what musicians do best: Tell stories.
And in Dylan’s eyes, the more narrators, the richer the retelling.
“My style is very cinematic in a way, and I think that narrative element is one reason I’ve always been drawn to hip-hop as an art form,” he shares with Vanyaland. “I’m always inspired when a rapper is able to tell a complete beginning-middle-end story in just a few verses.”
The origins of Dylan’s Star date back to 2019, when he began writing the choruses for each song, giving potential collaborators a sturdy but open-ended starting point for their respective tracks. He also fleshed out the instrumentals, flexing his composer prowess, strengthened from his time studying at New England Conservatory.
“Most of the songs had at least some preliminary structure done even before the pandemic hit,” Dylan explains. “With the choruses themselves already being written, each song already had its own emotional context. The rappers I worked with then had something to go off of when writing their verses. All of the artists featured on the album are people I look up to for their own music as well and so it was an absolute honor to be able to work with them.”
As time — and an entire pandemic — passed, the songs shape-shifted, often as new collaborators hopped on board. Red Shaydez completed her parts for “Around Me” a year and a half ago, literally “working around” fellow collaborator Jolee Gordon’s vocals and filling the spaces intentionally left for her. She recorded her verse on her own terms, at SOE Complex in Weymouth with International Show, her engineer. Just recently she learned “Around Me” had swelled to include another voice: SeeFour, who’s coincidentally a frequent collaborator of hers.
“A year and a half passes by and he texts me [about adding SeeFour],” Shaydez recalls with surprise. “I thought it was a great fit.. We performed the track [live] for the first time this year and it was magical. A one-of a-kind experience for sure.”
Like we said, in the A Star or a Lonely Dreamer universe, there’s lots of like-minded elbow-bumping. That’s just what happens when the stars align juuust at the right time — or at least, when you have the right ringleader to put them in the perfect order.
Hear A Star or a Lonely Dreamer below.