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Black City (Ghostly 25 Year Anniversary Edition) on LP

On the occasion of Ghostly's 25th Anniversary and Black City's

15th Anniversary, Ghostly and Matthew Dear present a special

Transparent Silver vinyl repressing.

Released in 2010, nearly a decade into his craft, Black City was a

watershed moment for Matthew Dear. A steely noir set that

straddled electronic dance and indie rock classification, earning

him Best New Music from Pitchfork and a worldwide tour with a

besuited band, the album unlocked Dear's darkest and most

engrossing ideas to date. The love-obsessed songwriter of 2007's

Asa Breed had given way to a more existentially paranoid entity.

Creeping disco tempos, cavernous atmospherics, and strange

distortions brought his signature avant-pop sound to a moodier

place. Black City wasn't to be found on any map. It was a

composite, an imaginary metropolis peopled by desperate

cases, lovelorn souls, and amoral motives, with flashes of

sweetness and hope.

In Black City, nothing is at it seems: leadoff single "Little People

(Black City)" is a nine-and-a-half minute disco odyssey,

subverting it's gleaming electronic lead with eerily giddy

backing vocals and cryptic, ominous lyrics ("a frozen wasted

heart / has died", "love me like a clown"); "You Put a Smell on Me"

is a sordid sex romp set to hysterically chattering percussion and

a serrated synth line that will set your teeth on edge; "More

Surgery" at first recalls the barely-there Krautrock of Harmonia

in it's burbling minimalism, until Dear's chanted chorus of "Alter

genetics / to make my body glow / I need more surgery / there's

so much more to know" sends the track hurtling into a

dystopian future.

And yet, for all the foreboding moods on Black City, it's the

album's sweeter moments that illustrate Matthew Dear's

growing maturity as a songwriter. "Slowdance" is a futuristic

lullaby in which Dear articulates a lover's helplessness ("I can't

be the one to tell you everything's wrong") over breathy, Arthur

Russell-esque cello swishes; the album-closing "Gem" is an

achingly simple, reverb-drenched piano ballad that ends with a

long, slow fade.