There is an ecstatic melancholy in Dent May’s music. The bedroom pop auteur’s songs are both bittersweet and exuberant, breaking your heart while you can’t help but sing along.
Over six albums, May has built a wildly diverse discography spanning 17 years. He has typically worked alone, assembling perfect pop gems on his laptop, playing nearly every instrument himself. But when he began preparations for his new album, May’s tried and true process suddenly felt stale.
“I was so comfortable in my creative routine,” says May, “that it was hard to push myself to try anything new. But after messing around with a few songs, I just said ‘forget the computer’ and started sending voice memos to my friends.”
May booked a series of sessions at Honeymoon Suite, the Los Angeles studio May co-owns with the album’s producer Paul Cherry. He invited a rotating cast of musician friends to the studio, without rehearsal or planning. Improvisation was everything. Whatever happened each day became the record. On The Big One, joined by a live band of his fellow LA music lifers, Dent May decided to step out of the bedroom and into the world.
“It’s about building a lifetime of making music,” says May. “I believe that if you keep going, good things will happen. But sometimes you have to shake things up a little.”
The Big One brings together both the scrappy DIY ethos of Elephant 6 Collective and early The Magnetic Fields with May’s lifelong affinity for the great ’70s singer-songwriters like Harry Nilsson and Ram-era Paul McCartney. The songs balance a clear-eyed view of the world with a cautious optimism, looking at the everyday experiences of disappointment and heartbreak with a sense of possibility for the good that may still come. Things might seem bleak, May tells us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be thankful for our brief time here on Planet Earth.
Take the second track, “I Remember…”, for example. The song is a recollection of a long-past relationship, inspired by the bittersweet nostalgia of Fellini’s Amarcord and Joe Brainard’s I Remember. But rather than linger in regret, May and his band conjure a DIY Electric Light Orchestra for a song that feels more like a celebration than a post-mortem. It becomes an appreciation of the good times as well as the bad, gratitude that the relationship even happened at all: “Do you ever look back on us/And smile just a little?”
“Second Wind” is a tribute to the possibilities of a night on the town, especially one where you don’t really feel like going out. The song opens with May exhausted, pining for his bed over a piano lullaby, before the drums kick him out of his revery and the tempo doubles. “Let’s hit the town for the evening,” May sings. “Fill up our hearts with some feeling.” The wry “I Don’t Like You (But I Love You)” features the band at their absolute height, as May portrays unrequited love with the dogged hope of a true romantic: “All alone each night/Keep the dream alive/Just give me a chance/And I’ll show you what real love is like.”
The title track is the beating heart of the record. Over a steady drumbeat, piano, and accordion, a melancholy May sings, “The big one’s coming, the big one’s on its way,” promising disaster. But May won’t wallow in the misery: “Thank the Lord for all my friends/We can make it ’til the end/No we can’t stop now/Who knows? Tomorrow it all could turn around.” For May, hope comes in the form of others.
“My music is very much for other people,” says May. “A popular line I hear from other songwriters is, ‘This is all for me. This is my diary. This is my therapy.’ For me, music is about communication. Sharing it with other people is the entire point.”
It’s with this joyful melancholy Dent May draws in the world. Everything might be ending, the planet could be careening off into chaos, but tonight there’s a party down the block and you’re invited. Be sure and bring your friends.
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