Dent May premiered the video for his duet with Frankie Cosmos “Across the Multiverse” — also the title track to his just-released new album — via Pitchfork TV. The video, directed by Robbie Barnett, features two lovers, played by Dent and Greta Kline of Frankie Cosmos, pining for each other across space and time.
“Don’t wanna move to Southern California / I wasn’t really meant for LA…” So sang Dent May once upon a time, now he’s eating those words with a side of avocado toast in his new Los Angeles bungalow. What made the lifelong Mississippi boy pull up stakes and head west? “No one looks at you funny if you wear a tuxedo to the supermarket.” What he means is he moved there to shake up his surroundings, clear his head, and write the magical mystery tour de force Across the Multiverse.
Following the lead of musical-polymaths-with-LA-ties before him like Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, and Harry Nilsson, Dent’s style on Across the Multiverse will be familiar to fans of his previous work. Yet there’s something more refined about this collection… Stately strings mingle with boogie piano like old friends. Synths weave a celestial backdrop throughout. Every verse, bridge and chorus in its right place, giving it the unmistakable feel of a true songwriting craftsman at work. Lyrically Dent has never been sharper, musing on themes like modern romance and the distance to the moon as he searches for meaning among the infinite scrolling feeds of our 21st century augmented reality. The title track, a duet with Frankie Cosmos, is a deep space love song about finding love beyond impossible boundaries.
The LA Times writes of May, “The young Southern troubadour writes singalong songs filled with wit and earnestness. Think Boston renegade Jonathan Richman or songwriter-actor Loudon Wainwright III.”
Across the Multiverse was written and recorded in a sunny bedroom in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood, with Dent producing and playing nearly every instrument himself. The tracks were selected from dozens of songs written after the LA move, a gold rush of productivity inspired by late nights DJ’ing rare disco funk cuts at local watering holes. It’s his first album for Carpark Records and was released August 18th.
