Recommended tracks: “Buses Replace Trains,” “Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow,” “Pined for You My Entire Life”
Artists you may like: beabadoobee, Laufey, Strawberry Guy
Between tour stops and festival visits, British-Canadian singer-songwriter Matt Maltese has crafted another ode to heartbreak and desire in his sixth studio album, Hers. With an already extensive discography, Hers balances intimate band sounds with full orchestration as Maltese lets himself drown in everyday imagery tinged with feelings of hunger, longing, and desire. There is no other way to precisely describe this album other than the perfect soundtrack to play on the late-night drive home. As the track list progresses, a sense of paranoia and anxiety over love and relationships envelops the listener with standout songs including singles “Buses Replace Trains” and “Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow” along with “Happy Birthday” and “Tangled.”
Starting off this album are some woodwinds and piano to unwind the listener as “Arthouse Cinema” eases us into the album. An overture to Hers, the song highlights the major themes and aesthetics of the album as the soft band sound soon expands to a full orchestra in the chorus. The lyrics “It’s nice to press pause on the real world” only add to the relaxation of the song as Maltese asks audiences to lose themselves and make sure that their “phones are switched off.”
One of the most well received singles of the album, “Buses Replace Trains,” uses day-to-day metaphors to explore the vulnerability of love. The pulsing piano and simple guitar quickly establish the song as a ballad, while the strings in the chorus very lightly add to the softness of the love song. Maltese gives us some of his best songwriting with the lines “I wanna tiptoe in your mind” and “forever is too short / I wanna make love in the afterlife” just in the first verse. The songwriter’s focus on small admissions of affection in his lyrics make each song feel even more sweet and addictive.
As noted, a standout of the album is the heartbreaking and haunting “Happy Birthday.” An acoustic guitar takes up more space in this song, giving it a different texture from the openers. The song discusses the yearning for someone lost as Maltese says he’ll “break his legs in half / throw my arms away” to regain a lost lover. His focus on said lover’s birthday gives a more tangible sense of nostalgia with the choir faintly singing “hip hip hooray,” which emphasizes the sense of haunting. Maltese’s soft, nasal voice blends well with this somber tone as the chorus finishes on the saddening “I miss you and happy birthday.”
Two more of the albums singles follow; “Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow” and “Always Some MF.” Throughout the album, Maltese is able to balance the small acoustic band with the larger orchestra, seamlessly transitioning from one to another. In “Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow,” the artist laments about the anxieties of distance as “even heaven looks at me and laughs” and “you’re allowed to treat me as the fix you need.” These same fears are repeated in “Always some MF” as paranoia over someone “seeking the affection of my girl.” Maltese’s underlying anger tries to rationalize itself with the line “I knew this wouldn’t come for free.” These singles sit comfortably in the midsection of Hers with the slow waltzing rhythms, subtle strings, and understated woodwinds and horns adding a nice contrast to the poetically crass lyrical content.
“Cure for Emptiness” signals the halfway point of Hers with a much larger focus on the piano. The dreamlike piano melody accompanies a story about desperation as Maltese sings “I can’t love you if you can’t love me.” A song that surrounds itself in misery, it asks “how you gonna rule the world when you can’t even walk the dog.” Sweeping statements and rhetorical questions make listeners feel small and unable to find the “words for happiness.” As the shift in the album’s tone takes place, the somewhat veiled metaphors and analogies are left behind as Maltese fully drives into dejection.
For the first time in Hers, vocal doubling takes the lead in “Holiday From Yourself,” which highlights the nostalgic tone of the song. In almost a reflection of the first half of the album, Maltese opens the song with “So you traveled the world / But you don’t have the girl.” The realization that you cannot run away from your problems and emotions infects the lyrics with “no holiday will help” and “hot white sand won’t bring her back.” This is the most self-aware song of the album before Maltese reverts back to his romantic ways in “Pined For You My Entire Life.”
The distortion on the guitar in “Pined For You My Entire Life” gives a nice change in texture as the single offers quintessential Matt Maltese. In the first verse, the line “I should get a PhD. in yearning all the time” best encapsulates the themes of Maltese’s work as he slow dances towards his own destruction. A more stripped back instrumentation in this single adds to the relaxing mood as Maltese yearns “morning, noon and night.”
Matt Maltese then joins the small club of musicians who have referenced the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in their work with “Eternal Darkness of the Spotless Mind.” The pace of the album picks up yet again as Maltese lovingly looks back on a past relationship. References to the original film tangle itself in the song with lines such as “no machines that erase you from my life.” The backing vocals and electric keys in this song add to its eternalness. There is a subtle genius to how Maltese adds to the dreamlike state of his music as his lyrics become more and more sorrowful, which results in a still lingering sense of abandonment and avoidance of one’s issues.
This sense of self-removal comes to a head in the two closing songs: “Tangled” and “Everybody’s Just As Crazy As Me.” Finding himself in an old-fashioned love triangle, the singer-songwriter entangles himself: “now our hearts are truly tangled.” A sense of defeat and reconciliation develops in the song’s narrative with the second chorus shifting to “let us be tangled.” A more spread-out and loose melody in the piano and woodwinds only further highlights this reined-in defeat.
Closing out this heartsick record is a final denial of resolve in “Everybody’s Just As Crazy As Me.” Maltese warns audiences to “take my advice / don’t take my advice” as he closes off Hers with a return to the focus on imagery, bookending with the start of the album. Still, with the piano melody and vocal doubling, the singer is able to string together the album in a single song to give a closing to the latest elegy to admiration and yearning.
Hers is yet another well-crafted dissertation on the human condition by singer-songwriter Matt Maltese. With its shifts between strings, woodwinds, and small bands, each song feels like another admission to guilt over love and pining. Hers is an experience within itself and is out now on all platforms.
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