Matthew Dear

It's been four years since Matthew Dear emerged from the Michigan woodwork with his microhouse debut, Leave Luck to Heaven. A lovely, pop-inflected concoction of skipping beats, nervous melodies and Dear's brooding vocals, Luck propelled the college grad-turned-pizza delivery boy straight into the hearts of indie rockers, clubbers and discerning DJs. Since becoming one of America's top techno/house producers, the prolific Dear has been delivering ever since, churning out boundary-pushing dancefloor singles, albums and DJ sets under aliases like False, Jabberjaw and, most notably, his sexed-charged Audion moniker.

With Asa Breed, Dear returns to his namesake and his melodic roots, fashioning an electronic album that embraces more traditional song structures and a pop sensibility—something akin to what Brian Eno was doing in the '70s, albeit more beat-driven. Lovelorn ditties like "Neighborhoods" and "Pom Pom," with their lilting melodies, fuzzy warmth and catchy vocals, sound like Top 40 hits from another dimension, while "Fleece on Brain" and "Don and Sherri" demonstrate that techno bpms can go hand-in-hand with more familiar, short-form song formats.

But Postal Service this is not. Despite the surface appearance of sun-kissed catchiness, Asa Breed's songs are imbued with a subversive and sinister edge. With its percolating bleeps and murky melodies, the stunning lead single "Deserter" sees Dear waxing world-weary before the track resolves into an infectious pledge of self-reliance. The album's latter half grows darker still, as the native Texan returns to his folk and blues roots, melding guitars and expansive acoustics with rusty electronic melodies.

—James Jung
06.01.07

Asa Breed furthers a seemingly happenstance shift to electronics-based indie pop that began on 2003's Leave Luck to Heaven and continued on 2004's Backstroke. Where the vocal tracks on those two albums sounded as if they began as instrumentals and just happened to benefit from lyrics and melodies thought up after the fact, there is an apparent deliberate attempt here at making songs. "Deserter" is the greatest example of Matthew Dear's gradual development as a writer, one of the most affecting songs he has made -- full of dazed textures, a very direct beat, and a typically disconnected vocal, it doesn't seem built to move the listener in any way, but it unexpectedly grabs hold, not unlike Wire's most subdued and straightforward material (such as "The 15th" or "Heartbeat"). One thing that hasn't changed is the elusiveness of the lyrics: most of them could mean anything, or perhaps nothing at all, and what seems tossed-off could have some profound subtext. No matter the amount of effort Dear put into his lyrics, the sounds he makes with his voice still take precedence. A little exposure to his constantly morphing flat baritone goes a long way, even though it is used in so many ways; there's barely intelligible gibberish, singsongy semi-sneering, exaggerated David Byrne deadpan, whiny whispering, and a few other methods used to convey stories, self-examination, and in-jokes. (With its resemblance to Japan's "Visions of China," "Shy" could use a David Sylvian impersonation, but that is not so easy to pull off.) Since producing dancefloor tracks remains Dear's most natural talent, a few of the album's songs would just happen to be effective as instrumentals when played in certain clubs; the likes of "Neighborhood," "Don and Sherri," and "Fleece on Brain," when stripped of vocals, sound just like typical Dear productions, but they do bend toward the need of the song. If there is an unexpected aspect of the album, it's within the last quarter of the program, where there are three scruffy songs dominated by acoustic guitar. Lurching and rumbling away, Dear sounds in need of shade and water, susceptible to being knocked over by some stray tumbleweed. ~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide