Matthew Connor casts a spectral tone on the unsettling ‘Don’t Wait Up’
Boston songwriter and composer releases new single on September 23
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Matthew Connor’s haunting new album ‘Disappearances’ is out October 21
NOW PLAYING: Watch the ‘Lose This Number’ on YouTube
Photo Credit: Anthony Grassetti
BOSTON, MA [September 23, 2022] – The music of Matthew Connor hangs in the air like a specter. It floats, twists, and winds its way through a storytelling arc that unfolds like a novel, its theatrical expansiveness dancing through empty spaces and unfamiliar places as a larger, and often unsettling, theme emerges from the shadows. On Friday, September 23, a new chapter surfaces from his forthcoming album Disappearances as the evocative Boston songwriter and composer releases “Don’t Wait Up,” a haunting tale of a missing teenage girl and the world that carries on without her.
The story of missing people and the lives of those they leave behind is one that runs through the 10 tracks on October’s cinematic Disappearances. But “Don’t Wait Up,” perhaps a non-traditional selection as the LP’s second single – the follow-up to August’s captivating “Lose This Number” and the last new music before the album drops – stands on its own as a rather ghostly composition. It also finds Connor conducting a string quintet at Hive Mind Recording in Brooklyn, utilizing his falsetto voice as its own instrument, and collaborating with folk guitarist Will Stratton (Bella Union) and backing vocalist Blake Cowan, better known under his Wickerbird moniker.
There are several layers at work on “Don’t Wait Up,” and they all come together over the track’s featherweight four minutes. Where “Lose This Number” was a dramatic, alt-country-leaning torch song about two people going their separate ways after realizing they perhaps never knew each other at all, “Don’t Wait Up” leans into more clandestine and atmospheric territories, and focuses on the worlds of those taken from us.
“‘Don’t Wait Up’ is the story of a teenage girl in a small town who didn’t come home one night, and about how the life of the town kept right on going, although forever changed,” Connor says. “I barely remember writing this song, which means it must have come quickly and easily. I do know I had the sounds of Will Stratton and Wickerbird in mind, so I was thrilled that they both agreed to be a part of it after I sent them my first demo. I also had always wanted to write a song that sat entirely in my head voice and falsetto, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity for that. I think it lends an air of ghostliness to the song.”
Disappearances features a fictional cast of characters that show up in various songs across the album, and here, we’re introduced to a few of the players: Marie was unassuming but well-liked and trusted by parents and teachers, and her disappearance has rattled those around her; Nora was the cool kid we all wished to be; Lila carried her secrets close and desires of adulthood closer; and Jennifer was destined to leave this fictional small town for as long as she knew how to. Their lives entangled, their decisions impactful, their stories unfolding.
“Like every other song on the album, it tells the story of a person who has disappeared, although in this case the disappearance serves almost as a backdrop to a portrait of ordinary swooning teenage rebellion: the kids are still hanging out in the woods and breaking into their mothers’ liquor cabinets despite what’s become of Marie, but there’s a lingering chill of uncertainty,” Connor assures. “While ‘Don’t Wait Up’ tells more of a straightforward disappearance narrative, both songs feature – perhaps – unreliable narrators asking question after question to an unknown ‘you’: ‘Do you know where your mother hides the brandy? Do you know what goes on behind the trees?’ in ‘Don’t Wait Up’; ‘What have they been telling you? Where have those flowers gone?’ in ‘Lose This Number.’ Both songs are mysteries with no solutions, each bursting into an emotional climax before dispersing into an unsettled non-ending.”
Of course, the decision to present “Don’t Wait Up” as the second single from Disappearances is more about an invitation to the larger picture than a shallow yearning to land on a pop-riddled playlist or appeal to the TikTok generation. The song is a snapshot, and as the lens pulls back, a wider vision begins to reveal itself. It’s Connor’s way of asserting himself as a creative force crafting music on his own terms, unbothered by trends, untethered to what we may expect of him.
“In some ways this feels like an odd choice for a single: it’s a sleepy little thing, and there’s no chorus to speak of,” he admits. “That said, I picked it because it showed off some different sides of the sound world of the album: Where ‘Lose This Number’ showcases the hint of country twang and the beats, ‘Don’t Wait Up’ leans into a more mystical direction, and is also one of the five songs featuring the chamber string quintet. I think it leads listeners deeper into the mystery of the record. And on a personal note, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever written and recorded.”
Media Contact: Please direct all press inquiries to Matthew Connor at mc@matthewconnor.net or Michael Marotta at michael@publisist.co.
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‘Don’t Wait Up’ single artwork:
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‘Don’t Wait Up’ production credits:
Written by Matthew Connor
Produced by Matthew Connor & Jeremy Page
Mixed by Jeremy Page
Mastered by Kevin Blackler at Blackler Mastering
Cover photo by Matthew Connor
Matthew Connor: vocals, keys, dulcimer
Jeremy Page: synths
Will Stratton: acoustic guitar
Blake Cowan (Wickerbird): backing vocals
Strings arranged and conducted by Matthew Connor
Strings recorded and engineered by Vince Chiarito at Hive Mind Recording
Violins: Jonathan Block, Megan Hilands, Tina Clara Lee
Violas: Lesley Hogg, Beth Holub
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Matthew Connor short bio:
Matthew Connor is a crooner for the 21st century, writing heart-wrenching songs that combine the windswept ideals of classic American balladry with stark depictions of modern-day alienation. The Boston-based Connor has a haunting voice that conjures ghosts of past heartbreaks, and he pairs it with spectral guitars that recall country tearjerkers and alt-pop brooding. _Maura Johnston
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On Matthew Connor’s Disappearances, by Brad Nelson:
Places of disappearance are pervaded by a sense of mystery and melancholy. Think of moonlight shivering over stalks of wheat. Trees in the forest cross hatching into new unreadable black metal band logos. Floorboards in an old house weeping in the most abandoned keys. This is the kind of scenery that Matthew Connor’s new album, Disappearances, plants itself in, the realm where one can cross over from the missing to the gone. Every song on the record is a story of someone parting the curtain of reality and slipping behind it; some of the disappeared are runaways, some have been taken, some have been swallowed up by darkness without evidence or explanation, but each missing person opens up a mystical emptiness in the place they’ve left behind and in the people who still live there.
“Someone’s disappeared again / and now they’re dragging the reservoir,” Connor sings on the opener “HeatLightning”; his Scott Walker-esque baritone thrums against the steady heartbeat of a bass drum and a guitar ruminating somewhere between country and old rock and roll but never fully giving into either. Connor plays in the shadows of both genres throughout the record – think Chris Isaak if he really disappeared into the BlackLodge just like his character in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. In fact, Connor’s work on Disappearances is more than a little Lynchian, particularly in the mode of Peaks and Mulholland Dr.; his songs thrill and despair at the impossibility of knowing someone completely, the missing pieces in our images of other people,especially since those images are subject to constant erosion. “He was gone before the memories finished forming / I’ve forgotten if his eyes were grey or green” goes a lyric in “Sawdust Trail,” the narrator attempting to pin down the last remaining details of a phantomic lover that rises from a lake.
The real keeps bending into the surreal in this way over the course of Disappearances, people wandering so far from home and so deeply into themselves that they no longer recognize the world around them. Bridges and codas open like trap doors in the songs. The percussion can sound like some stumbling through a field crunching dead leaves underfoot, or like a riding crop sounding in the distance. It can also crackle like an old record, or rather like a sample of an old record you might hear creaking its way through a Portishead song; on“Lose This Number,” the first single from the record, such a drum figure stutters through the track and pulses against thick spiderwebs of guitar, as Connor’s voice sings of the loneliness and the feelings of disappearance that accompany a friend’s betrayal: “When they come for me / and they’re going to come / don’t you come running to my aid.”
Connor’s keen observations of the ghostly trails people leave behind is what binds the songs on Disappearances together, even when the arrangements are crisp and spangled as a Nudie suit, as they are on “Desaparecido,” a legitimate country ballad that builds and builds until it’s suddenly a political song for Linda Ronstadt to sing, complete with choir. But the album is also capable of the stillness of a garden at night, beauty shrouded and complicated by the dark. “Driftwood” is one of the most gorgeous moments on the album for this very reason, the pale light of Connor’s falsetto sinking into a coursing riverbed of strings and guitar, his narrator wanting to be fully aware of the moment before their disappearance – or possibly even their death – “I want to see it coming / I want to look it in the eye / I want to know what hit me / I want to blow a kiss goodbye.” After Connor stops singing, the strings and guitars coil into a vortex that the song disappears down. And just like that, it’s gone.
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Media praise for Matthew Connor:
The music of Matthew Connor has been featured in Country Queer, NYLON, Out Magazine, Vanyaland, Music Box Pete, Flaunt, Glamour, PopMatters, AllMusic, Kaltblut, Songwriting Magazine, Bistro Awards, Cambridge Day, Sound of Boston, Enigma Online, and other fine publications and outlets.
The music of Matthew Connor can be heard on Bay State Rock, Indie Radio YFM, Everything You Know Is Wrong on Salem State Radio, Banks Radio Australia, Mark Skin Radio’s Original Music Showcase, Marc’s Alt-Rock Playground, and Christian’s Cosmic Corner, and other fine radio shows and stations.
“His throaty croon guides us through this dark interpersonal terrain in a near-surreal haze, underscoring the horror as we slowly realize, '…the call is coming from within the house'.” _Country Queer on ‘Lose This Number’
“‘Night After Night,’ the latest from Boston-based singer Matthew Connor, combines a lighter rhythm than you might spend the night dancing to, but just the right tempo to settle your mind after a night out. Connor’s soft voice paired with the floating rhythm could easily make its way into any lounge where people sip wine on velvet couches instead of pounding shots on a cracked leather barstool.” _Out Magazine
“Connor has decided to take his music in a new direction — darker, deeper, and more raw.” _Flaunt Magazine
"[‘Lose This Number’] is so hauntingly profound in terms of how divided everything has become across America in the past six years… It's beautiful, eerie, it's just haunting. I'm just so in love with this song and the way it's arranged and delivered." _Carmelita of Bay State Rock
“The song has an ominous backdrop, but if you listen intently enough you'll fall for Matthew's deep and booming voice that echoes through all of the mellow instrumentation abound to create a truly relaxing and unique experience... it shows off a new breed of singer-songwriter that has the ability to draw people in from all different musical backgrounds, and have them marvel over the talent that they're encountering. An impressive track that deserves a thorough listening.” _Music Box Pete
“If you listen to Matthew Connor‘s latest album, a cinematic masterpiece, you’ll hear a clean, well-produced mix of instrumentals that accompany his voice. It’s no surprise he composes soundtracks for films. ‘Midnight Blue’ is an eerie, immersive experience. It feels like walking into the haunted house of an opera singer cast away from the choir for being just a bit too daring and subversive.” _Sound of Boston
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Press Contact: michael@publisist.co or mc@matthewconnor.net
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