While he’s behind no small number of very funny comedic turns on screen (to pick two out of a wealth, he’s the imbecilic if almost sweet-natured boss in The IT Crowd or Beef, proud owner of an erotic biro, in House Of Fools), Matt Berry has also been producing some excellent records in recent years. Among them are Witchazel and Kill The Wolf, sets of pop songs touch by psychedelic folk and rendered with wonderful melodrama, seemingly beamed in from the late ’60s/early ’70s heyday of solo multi-instrumentalists, not to mention 2014’s ambient exploration, Music For Insomniacs. He’s now releasing The Small Hours, his fourth long-player on Acid Jazz, and has kindly given us a first play of album track ‘Gone For Good’. Seemingly about the perils of listening too closely to the voices in one’s head, stemming from the album’s titular hours, "an intensely quiet time and so all your thoughts and fears can be amplified", says Berry, it glides out of Mellotron-lined choruses into a brilliant pocket-orchestra middle eight – take a listen above.
The track follows the first he put out from the album, ‘Obsessed And So Obscure’ (listen below; key lyric: "I think my heart now beats for three – you and me and Christopher Lee"), which will be on shelves on September 16. Following its release, he’ll be playing a UK tour, beginning at Birmingham’s Academy 2 on October 25. For full details, head over to his website here. You can pre-order the album here.
