Yes, we really missed this guy. We missed the tunes he writes, his voice and his singing, his songs and his harmonies. No one can do all this the way he does. MATT PRYOR and his band THE GET UP KIDS have been joining us for so many years, and we still enjoy their music and keep their songs like little treasures. A little later his other band THE NEW AMSTERDAMS jumped on as well. They were welcome immediately and still are.
We are very proud to have MATT PRYOR and THE NEW AMSTERDAMS on our artist roster, and if you enjoy MATT PRYOR and both of his bands as much as we do, and if you think it is time to finally release some of his new music, we are proud to inform you about his new solo record “Wrist Slitter” to be released on Arctic Rodeo Recordings this fall. Please expect “Wrist Slitter” to be a rock album. Please expect “Wrist Slitter” to be a record packed with hooklines to fall in love with.
After releasing “Confidence Man” in 2008 and “May Day” in 2012 – quieter, folkier solo releases that allowed him to express a separate side of his songwriting – MATT PRYOR was ready to record something more aggressive. “I’d just gone through a really negative headspace and then seen the light at the
end of the tunnel,” he says. “So I was like, ‘Well, I’m just going to fucking belt this out then,’ and that was really satisfying.” It was this sense of satisfaction that lead to “Wrist Slitter”, Pryor’s third solo record and one that stands apart from his others. It’s not just his more assertive singing and instrumentation – MATT PRYOR recruited drummer Bill Belzer and bassist Eric McCann of THE NEW AMSTERDAMS and “told them to play fast,” he says – but also in the ideas that its songs express. “My last record “May Day” was lyrically very dark and very unhappy, almost like a breakup record,” he explains. “The original concept of “Wrist Slitter” was for the chorus of the title song to say, ‘I don’t want to write another wrist-slitter.’ But it didn’t end up that way. It just ended up being this one-minute long blue-grassy, banjo thing; it is, in fact, actually a wrist-slitter.”
“Wrist Slitter” from MATT PRYOR will be out on CD, on vinyl + free CD, and as digital download November 15th via Arctic Rodeo Recordings/Cargo Records.