Black City is feverishly described on Matthew Dear’s website as an “imaginary metropolis peopled by desperate cases, lovelorn souls, and amoral motives.” That’s all well and good, Mr. Dear, but don’t you realize that this same thing has been done a million times over in the past two decades? And though the cheesy descriptions on their own aren’t enough to discredit what is often a good dance album, when coupled with the sales of limited edition totems ($125 cast-aluminum models of Black City buildings), the whole affair is just a little bit too much to be taken as anything else but pseudo-intellectual silliness. Had he left all the super-serious background information about his perceived vision out of the public eye, Black City might have been easier to enjoy, but taken as is it sounds bland and pretentious compared to all of the new electronic outfits out there who are putting in the effort to create something a little more imaginative than a concept album about an alternate-universe New York City.
That said, there are some moments worth paying attention to, such as the shuffling, funky “I Can’t Feel,” which lays off the aspiring-to-be-heavy themes and instead indulges in some of the older electronic sounds that Matthew Dear pulls off best. While the concept of Black City is pretty stale, a lot of people still dig the kind of mid-tempo beats from the early 2000s that show up here, making “I Can’t Feel” a cool, classic-sounding dance track that should please a variety of audiences. “Soil To Seed” and “You Put A Smell On Me” also tap into that same kind of nonchalant, funky groove with big, buzzy sounds bumping up against cleaner, sliding backbeats that serve as an appropriate cushion for Dear’s always-monotone vocals.
Overall, though, the good moments aren’t enough to lift up the overwhelmingly mediocre sounds of the rest of Black City, which more often than not fails to achieve the kind of world-weary and deliciously weird tone that it aspires to. In “You Put A Smell On Me,” the repetition of, “little red nightgown, nightgown, little red nightgown” lends an authentic sense of weirdness to the song because of the low, creepy bellow of Dear’s voice, making the song a prime example of how naturally freaky and good he can sound when he stops thinking so much about balancing darkness with humor and grit and just goes ahead and does it. Conversely, songs like “Monkey” are so obviously trying to gain attention with their peculiarity that it just makes them come off as forced, and consequently kind of boring. Lines like “I’m a monkey/frozen in my monkey dream” make you long for the days when Dear managed to produce works that relentlessly chugged forward with a rhythmic force that thankfully lacked the tired concepts put forth here.
Though Matthew Dear is certainly a talented artist, Black City comes off as being so affected in its vision and conceptual framework that it’s difficult to even compare it to his best work. On its own the music is finely crafted, well-paced and astutely filled in with an admirable mix of rough and clean sounds. And considering that Matthew Dear is already a respected electronic artist, these things probably won’t matter to those who liked him already, since the problem is not that he’s missing any of his signature qualities on Black City, but rather that the whole “dark, gritty, alternate city” notion has been recycled so many times over that the effort towards making the album some kind of art-piece feels lame instead of innovative. At times Black City is dark, at times it’s funny, but it never achieves anything really dark or really funny, which is disappointing considering that, had the whole concept thing been left alone, those two moods could have been ignored and the music itself would have been easier to pay attention to, dance to, and enjoy.
Track List:
1. Honey
2. I Can't Feel
3. Little People (Black City)
4. Slowdance
5. Soil to Seed
6. You Put A Smell On Me
7. Shortwave
8. Monkey
9. More Surgery
10.Gem
