Matt Pryor - The Salton Sea (2025) Hi-Res

Kensas City native Matt Pryor is a household name for anyone familiar with the second and third wave emo movements. He fronted The Get Up Kids, one of the legendary bands that shaped the music scene for many years. However, the band grew tired of the unnecessary boundaries imposed by the emo genre, and on later albums they pushed the boundaries, moving toward a more indie sound.

Matt Pryor has just released his latest album under his own name, "The Salton Sea," which clearly demonstrates the continued passion he has shown for music and songwriting over the decades. Longtime fans will hear stylistic influences reminiscent of artists like Paul Westerberg and Red House Painters. At its core, Pryor's unique musical voice is deeply rooted in artists like Elvis Costello and The Afghan Whigs.

The album title, "The Salton Sea," was not chosen lightly. While this album isn't a concept album, the songs on it were written during some of the darkest days of Pryor's life. He experienced a downward spiral over the course of what he sarcastically describes as the final six months of his "drinking career," ultimately hitting rock bottom. His habit eventually developed into a full-blown addiction, and between 2022 and 2023, he faced the ultimate choice many have faced: continue down this path and meet a tragic end, or recover, quit drinking, and move forward on the right path. Fortunately, Pryor chose the latter, and the beautiful legacy he left us is this album, "The Salton Sea."

The Salton Sea is known as the "Terminus Lake," meaning no new water flows into it, and its salinity is gradually increasing due to evaporation and pollution. Once a vibrant desert oasis that attracted celebrities and the wealthy in the 1950s and 1960s, it has now become a veritable wasteland. It's not hard to imagine that, in the throes of addiction, Pryor must have felt like an uninhabitable shadow of his once vibrant, vibrant self, a place once described as an "oasis in the California desert."

Pryor's latest songs evoke a timeless, nostalgic atmosphere, like someone else's memories unfolding as a narrative. Listeners are invited to reflect on what these moments meant and how they might unfold. This is no doubt due to the fact that, along with his sobriety, he has found solace in writing for the sake of writing, a practice he practices daily, often before dawn. If there's any upside to this situation, it's that after writing the soundtracks of so many people's lives for the past 30 years, Pryor has found yet another creative outlet to quell the demons on his own shoulder.