This record is about as self-referential as they come and if this is his world and he’s happy in it, maybe we don’t have a lot of choice but to be happy for him, too.
Popular musicians have a long, detailed history of unexpected and ill-advised career moves. Rock artists go country, country artists go pop; they go electric, they go acoustic, they change their name, they find Jesus, they take a decade and a half to record their next record. Bob Dylan has based his entire career on pissing off his fans, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music is one of the most dramatic middle finger displays ever put to tape, and once-promising rappers sell out so quickly and consistently it’s basically a rite of passage and almost not worth mentioning. Most reunion records are horrible, and let’s not even start on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories – I’ll just say hype can either be a divine blessing or a hellish curse.
Within this continuum you’ll find a very special sub-category of artists who, after years of nurturing their respective craft, suddenly, ahem, find their voice, discover their one true calling in life, and proclaim proudly to the world, “I just wanna sing!” Even worse, there exists a sub-sub-category of white people who answer the call to become rappers (you’re not off the hook, Debbie Harry), but we’ll get to that shortly. One has only to recall the almost-unendurable midsection of Boogie Nights and cringe at each cracking consonant of Dirk’s failed recording session to fully appreciate this peculiar strain of indulgent vanity.
Which brings us to Matthewdavid’s latest contribution to the canon of blunder, In My World. The Georgia-born Angeleno made a big splash back in 2010 when he dropped the genre-bomb Outmind in FlyLo’s kiddie pool, a record so absorbingly fulsome it will have a hard time coming down from way atop my all-time list, even after this mess of a proper follow-up. Too ambient, it was patently ignored by the beat scene, and for shame. Blemished and saturated, Outmind swam in slow motion through gridlock traffic heading east toward the desert like so many thousands of gleaming cars swaddled in their own rippling, distorted exhaust heat. It was Los Angeles painted in pink and orange, a Monet sunset reflecting bent palms in steel and glass. It was the sound of an able artist enamored of his new surroundings, new friends, and new inspiration. Shorter set pieces followed regularly in its wake: Disk II was similarly stunning, as was the rougher Livephreaxxx!!!! collaboration with Sun Araw. And last year’s meditational Mindflight was yet another highlight in the young musician’s discography despite its sleepily derivative New Age aspirations.
In My World, however, sees the same adept craftsman a few years later, on a patio bar somewhere east of La Brea, a little loopy on the Kool-Aid. He’s clearly comfortable, he’s clearly in love, he’s clearly got a decent line on some great sativa but, as we all know, contentedness rarely produces truly great records. Not that the songs on In My World aren’t frequently gorgeous or catchy, they’re just disappointingly insubstantial. Check the rhyme flow, yo, the beats don’t stop ’til the break of dawn…Did he really just use every single clichéd freestyle ad-lib in the book? For someone with such an impeccable skill for intricate production, it’s odd to see Matthewdavid fall prey to facile, boilerplate lyricism. All the hallmarks of his unique sound remain undiminished – the blown-glass bass, the gentle tape attenuations, the chirping torque of records rocking back and forth. But if you live in L.A., chances are high that you’ll hear “All Night Long” by the Mary Jane Girls about five times a day on Hot 92.3 anyway, so do we really need a chopped-and-screwed cover version with a dopey white boy over-enunciating all the breathless lyrics that make the song charming to begin with? Don’t answer that.
Artists are allowed creative license to mature and possibly make room for new fans, even if he or she lose some in the trade-off. I imagine In My World will win over a lot of new ears with its middle-of-the-road appeal. This record is about as self-referential as they come and if this is his world and he’s happy in it, maybe we don’t have a lot of choice but to be happy for him, too.
In My World is available on Brainfeeder.
