Matt Berry today shares Something In My Eye, the first new track from the forthcoming album Phantom Birds.
The ever-busy BAFTA award winning actor continues his remarkable musical meanderings with this new collection of songs that follows his last outing, the brilliantly conceived and rapturously received Television Themes from 2018.
Renowned for his love of all things musical and genre defying inventiveness over the course of his previous output, Phantom Birds is an extraordinary album that not only see Berry on vocal duties but for the most part playing most of the instrumentation, aided and abetted by legendary pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole and like-minded drummer Craig Blundell (Steven Wilson, Steve Hackett)
Talking about the album opener Something In My Eye, Berry explains; “it’s a song about putting a brave face on. telling everyone you’re fine, when in reality you’re really not at all. Not necessarily something you always hear from a male perspective.”
Inspired in part by a fascination with Bob Dylan’s trio of Nashville albums and the manner in which they were recorded follows and he follows along similar lines. The beauty of Phantom Birds is the seeming simplicity of the songs and minimal musicians so as not to detract from that – the result is a collection of songs pertaining to regular everyday life, from a personal perspective or on a more expansive level.
An intriguing narrative, Phantom Birds flows almost seamless amidst an idyllic backdrop of wonderful sentiment, subtle nuance and real experiences. Berry has arguably created his best work as a singer and songwriter enhancing a musical reputation to sit alongside his acting work – the two overlap in the track Covered In Clowns.
Gleaned from an assortment of unrelated instances, he explains: “I auditioned for the director John Landis who offered me the part there and then, only to deny ever meeting me some weeks later…”
With six solo albums under his belt Berry has managed to enjoy a passion that first flourished in his teenage years and has since ran in parallel with an ever-growing acting CV.
Not only has he written and performed his own songs, collaborations have also proved fruitful with the likes of Bond composer David Arnold, Jean-Michel Jarre and Josh Homme who him to appear and co-write a track on his renowned Desert Sessions series of releases.
Released on September 18 through Acid Jazz Records – Phantom Birds will be available on limited edition bone coloured vinyl, red vinyl, black vinyl, digipack CD, digitally and as a limited-edition cassette and you can pre-order here
the full track-listing is:
Something In My Eye
Danced All Night
Phantom Birds
Moonlight Flit
Man Of Doom
Where’s My Love
Take A Bow
Intermission
Hail To The King
In My Mind
That Yellow Bird
Waving Goodbye
Covered In Clowns