{"product_id":"804297812076","title":"BLACK CITY | VINYL RECORD (LP)","description":"\u003cp\u003eMatthew Dear, On the occasion of Ghostly's 25th Anniversary and Black City's  15th Anniversary, Ghostly and Matthew Dear present a special  Transparent Silver vinyl repressing.  Released in 2010, nearly a decade into his craft, Black City was a  watershed moment for Matthew Dear. A steely noir set that  straddled electronic dance and indie rock classification, earning  him Best New Music from Pitchfork and a worldwide tour with a  besuited band, the album unlocked Dear's darkest and most  engrossing ideas to date. The love-obsessed songwriter of 2007's  Asa Breed had given way to a more existentially paranoid entity.  Creeping disco tempos, cavernous atmospherics, and strange  distortions brought his signature avant-pop sound to a moodier  place. Black City wasn't to be found on any map. It was a  composite, an imaginary metropolis peopled by desperate  cases, lovelorn souls, and amoral motives, with flashes of  sweetness and hope.  In Black City, nothing is at it seems: leadoff single \"Little People  (Black City)\" is a nine-and-a-half minute disco odyssey,  subverting it's gleaming electronic lead with eerily giddy  backing vocals and cryptic, ominous lyrics (\"a frozen wasted  heart \/ has died\", \"love me like a clown\"); \"You Put a Smell on Me\"  is a sordid sex romp set to hysterically chattering percussion and  a serrated synth line that will set your teeth on edge; \"More  Surgery\" at first recalls the barely-there Krautrock of Harmonia  in it's burbling minimalism, until Dear's chanted chorus of \"Alter  genetics \/ to make my body glow \/ I need more surgery \/ there's  so much more to know\" sends the track hurtling into a  dystopian future.  And yet, for all the foreboding moods on Black City, it's the  album's sweeter moments that illustrate Matthew Dear's  growing maturity as a songwriter. \"Slowdance\" is a futuristic  lullaby in which Dear articulates a lover's helplessness (\"I can't  be the one to tell you everything's wrong\") over breathy, Arthur  Russell-esque cello swishes; the album-closing \"Gem\" is an  achingly simple, reverb-drenched piano ballad that ends with a  long, slow fade.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"DEAR,MATTHEW","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48240078422261,"sku":"804297812076","price":17.03,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0681\/9325\/5669\/files\/0804297812076.jpg?v=1780867568","url":"https:\/\/thevinylvista.com\/products\/804297812076","provider":"Vinyl Vista","version":"1.0","type":"link"}