Matt Maltese - madhouse (2020) Hi Res

Themes like the banality and loneliness of life have consistently weighed heavy on 23-year-old London artist Matt Maltese’s records. Following his 2018 debut album Bad Contestant and acclaimed 2019 album Krystal, which endeared him to tastemaker outlets like NME, NPR, Line Of Best Fit, Vice and more, his appropriately titled new EP madhouse isn’t just a score for the everyday boredoms we encounter. It’s a musing on us human beings’ “ever-hopeful quest for meaning and love.”

madhouse, like its predecessor Krystal, is another home birth - largely produced by Maltese himself, but with contributions from Bad Contestant producer Jonathan Rado (Weyes Blood, Whitney, Father John Misty) and Ben Baptie (Rex Orange County), plus The Lemon Twigs’ Brian D’Addario’s guitar and Sorry’s Asha Lorenz’s vocals on “Queen Bee.” Maltese has always nailed lonesome provocations with idiosyncratic dry wit but madhouse reckons with those emotions in a way the half British, half Canadian hasn’t yet fully explored until now.

I’ve found that sometimes the majority of the emotional journey of love and life is actually the search for an understanding of it. And these songs try and make peace with all of that, poke fun at it and, ultimately, embrace it.