Track: Matt Berry – ‘Summer Sun’: barnstorming and exuberant

THE EVER-prolific Matt Berry has shared another track from his upcoming album, The Blue Elephant.

Berry’s latest is not only, as ever, an elaborate and seemingly seamless stretching of his artistic development but also a significant milestone in his Acid Jazz Records career: the record marks his tenth year with the label, and promises to be as confounding, considered, and spectacular as Berry’s first or previous album (or any other for that matter).

“Summer Sun” continues Berry’s sharp detour from the Bob Dylan-styled realms of previous album Phantom Birds, down a mellifluously fascinating, psychedelic rabbit hole – one which furrows a path sufficiently varied yet closely related to “Aboard”, the initial peek fans were given of the new album’s 60s-reminescent sounds.

The new single sees Berry’s barnstorming songwriting style and exuberant guitar taken to incredible, ecstatic worlds of psych-affected freakbeat and acid rock amongst the late-60s’ pop infusion. Such a bright, incisively hypnotic fusion is one somewhat similar to the psychedelic, 60s’ revitalisation funnelled by The Brian Jonestown Massacre; Berry applying this sound onto his aural canvas in an unsurprising acuity akin to the Anton Newcombe-fronted band.

Atop this already almost overwhelmingly joyous cocktail of influences, Berry (who plays most instruments on the track and album) is also joined by Craig Blundell – the drumming powerhouse who joined him on Phantom Birds – who lets out bombastic yet stoic blasts of percussion.

Released next month, The Blue Elephant melds the vibrancy displayed on these previous two offerings using Berry’s characteristically meticulous, musical mentality, in an album clocking in at 46-minutes; the musician/songwriter packages this breadth of styles and musical ideas succinctly and inventively. These spiralling, ethereal sounds are employed to evoke “today’s close scrutiny in all of its bewildering, objectifying and unnerving experiences.” This conceptual tone is handled, for example, via the heavy-psych instrumental “Invisible”, the three-part “Blues Inside Me”, and a host of other emotive musical conduits.

Pre-order The Blue Elephant here.