Matt Berry Announces New Album ‘Phantom Birds’ Due Out September 18th
Music News | Jul 7th, 2020
Musician and comedic genius actor Matt Berry from What We Do In the Shadows (Season 2 is a must see!) announced he’s releasing another solo album (his 6th to date). Phantom Birds will be released on September 18th via Acid Jazz Records. I’ve just been exploring his music for the first time recently and absolutely love the song “October Sun” from his 2013 album Kill the Wolf. Pre-order on Amazon.com.
You can listen to a new track called “Something In My Eye:”
The ever-busy BAFTA award winning actor continues his remarkable musical meanderings with this new collection of songs that follows his last outing, the brilliantly conceived and rapturously received Television Themes from 2018. Renowned for his love of all things musical and genre defying inventiveness over the course of his previous output, Phantom Birds is an extraordinary album that not only see Berry on vocal duties but for the most part playing most of the instrumentation, aided and abetted by legendary pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole and like-minded drummer Craig Blundell (Steven Wilson, Steve Hackett).
Talking about the album opener “Something In My Eye”, Berry explains: “it’s a song about putting a brave face on. telling everyone you’re fine, when in reality you’re really not at all. Not necessarily something you always hear from a male perspective.”
Inspired in part by a fascination with Bob Dylan’s trio of Nashville albums and the manner in which they were recorded follows and he follows along similar lines. The beauty of Phantom Birds is the seeming simplicity of the songs and minimal musicians so as not to detract from that – the result is a collection of songs pertaining to regular everyday life, from a personal perspective or on a more expansive level.
An intriguing narrative, Phantom Birds flows almost seamless amidst an idyllic backdrop of wonderful sentiment, subtle nuance and real experiences. Berry has arguably created his best work as a singer and songwriter enhancing a musical reputation to sit alongside his acting work – the two overlap in the track “Covered In Clowns”. Gleaned from an assortment of unrelated instances, he explains: “I auditioned for the director John Landis who offered me the part there and then, only to deny ever meeting me some weeks later…”
With six solo albums under his belt Berry has managed to enjoy a passion that first flourished in his teenage years and has since ran in parallel with an ever-growing acting CV. Not only has he written and performed his own songs, collaborations have also proved fruitful with the likes of Bond composer David Arnold, Jean-Michel Jarre and Josh Homme who him to appear and co-write a track on his renowned Desert Sessions series of releases.
Track listing:
1. Something In My Eye
2. Danced All Night
3. Phantom Birds
4. Moonlight Flit
5. Man Of Doom
6. Where’s My Love
7. Take A Bow
8. Intermission
9. Hail To The King
10. In My Mind
11. That Yellow Bird
12. Waving Goodbye
13. Covered In Clowns
You can also pre-order the new album here.
