With a stream-of-consciousness style of songwriting and a sound straddling everything from psych to pop, the work of New York-via-Buffalo songwriter Matthew Danger Lippman looks to recreate the kaleidoscopic and often bizarre pictures of our interior worlds. “New album Once You Get Low You’ve Gotta Start Flying Baby promises to build upon this style is all of its bizarre glory,” we wrote in a preview, “with lead single ‘And’ typifying Lippman’s ability to be earnest and absurd in the same breadth. The sort of thing which only makes sense when caught up within it, dream logic fired by its own momentum and charged by the endearing brightness of its rhythm.”
Latest single ‘Set Up’ might not be quite as surreal as ‘And’, this time channelling all of its playfulness into wordplay, excavating every possible connotation of the titular phrase. “To be ‘set up’ on a date, to be ‘set up’ for failure, and to have a ‘set up’ in life that falls apart,” as MDL explains. All delivered with a vivid croon that lands squarely between heartache and mischief, leaving up to interpretation how serious or otherwise the track should be taken. Katy Rea, Scout Gillett and Ramona Petrini provide act as a “mini-choir of backing vocals,” working in tandem with the analogue synths to lift the sound towards a retro polish, meaning that self-deprecation has never been so fun.
The song comes complete with a video directed by Matthew Danger Lippman together with Violet Cowdin, with pseudo-one-take style bringing the lyrics to life in a way of which Spike Jonze would be proud.
Once You Get Low You’ve Gotta Start Flying Baby is out on the 2nd June and you can pre-order it now.