Matthew E White’s stage persona is of a Soul Train teddy bear. He’s a big cuddly dude in a white suit with agreeably ridiculous hair and a jokey, disheveled demeanour. So it’s a surprise – even a shock – to find him moving past this caricature on his second album and delving into real darkness.
A case in point is ‘Holy Moly’, a chirruping faux-gospel ballad that unspools in a thoroughly agreeable fashion until you hone in on the lyrics, which concern a real-life sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Evangelical community within which White was raised as a child. It’s like finding a razor blade in your jam sandwich: suddenly the (slightly forced) jolliness acquires a darker hue and you see shadows where previously there was only sunlight.
It’s quite a bait and switch, one White repeats on several occasions. On ‘Tranquility’, for instance, he mourns Philip Seymour Hoffman, the tragic actor White knew only through his screen roles. There are, naturally, grounds for fretting this might result in indie-pop’s very own ‘Candle In The Wind’, a dirge sucked deep down into a whirlpool of saccharine.
However, White’s flair as arranger and vocalist – as with his first album, Fresh Blood was meticulously assembled at the artist’s Spacebomb studio facility in Richmond, Virginia – ensure the tune is a triumph of craftsmanship, its drippy sentiments (can you really feel for the loss of a complete stranger?) beside the point.
There is humour too, though, again with an undercurrent of seriousness. The single ‘Rock And Roll Is Cold’ is a backhanded eulogy for rock music, a genre which White considers to have breathed its last: maybe, the song appears to suggest, that isn’t entirely a bad thing (“I don’t really see myself as a rock-and-roll guy. I see myself as a soul and R&B guy,” the artist recently said. “That’s the music that I listened to growing up.”)
White had considerable success with his 2012 debut Big Inner – so much so that, by his own admission, he didn’t quite know to respond to his sudden elevation. Rather than pander to fans with a repeat serving of that album, for the follow-up he has gone weirder and bleaker, resulting in a record full of beauty but also twitching with uneasy moments. It’s sometimes slick, often uncomfortable in its skin – and never less than compelling.

Key Track - 'Holy Moly'