Review:Â âEden Disorder EPâ - The Narcissist Cookbook
Of all the things we look for in new music - be that authenticity, great energy, interesting lyrics - one thing most of us have given up on expecting by now is originality. We're almost 70 years into this whole pop music lark, and nothing much has sounded truly new since the explosion of dance music in the 1990s.
It may come as a surprise then, to find the Stirling scene harbouring an artist that, whilst combining elements that are definitely familiar, manages to have a sound that is pretty much unique.
The Narcissist Cookbook, aka Matt Johnson, makes music that is hard to categorise. Thereâs a heavy dose of supremely catchy acoustic pop, but it never hangs around very long before being interrupted by a melting pot of spoken word, social comment, ambient passages, liberally sprinkled profanity and inventive musical flourishes.
Last yearâs full-length record âMothâ is fantastic introduction to the sound, but anyone whoâs seen The Narcissist Cookbook live in the past year or so would have got to the end wondering where the amazing cornerstones of his live set were - a pair of instantly compelling, so-catchy-youâre-singing-along-by-the-second-chorus tracks called âSugar In My Coffeeâ and âCourtneyâ.
These both appear on a brand new EP called âEden Disorderâ and the recorded versions manage the difficult trick of improving on something that really should be at it best delivered live.Â
âSugar In My Coffeeâ shows Johnson at his most playful. The song is a gonzo story about the singerâs struggle as a non-coffee drinker in a world that increasingly seems to revolve around the stuff. Itâs daft and funny, and a great example of The Narcissist Cookbook style and musical personality but applied to a trifling topic, rather than some of bigger issues he often grapples with. It will have you singing the âna na na nana, na na na nananaâ hook for the rest of the week.
âCourtneyâ tackles a much bigger topic altogether. Itâs kind of a comment on the way society treats women, all the more relevant post #metoo, viewed through the prism of the conspiracy theory that Courtney Love murdered Kurt Cobain. The track so confidently pulls off the high wire act of tackling highly sensitive subject matter with both seriousness and wit that it makes your head spin. The indelible chorus certainly helps, as does the fantastic lyric video (see below), illustrated in part by Stirling artist and general Death Collective legend and elder statesman Peter Russell.
The final two tracks go full Narcissist Cookbook â a pair of fully spoken word, soul bearing trips to very bottom of Johnsonâs psyche. In the hands of anyone else it would be so indulgent it would simply never work â yet these tracks are completely engrossing. They somehow reward repeat listens, despite a total absence of vocal melody. Iâm not sure how that even works.
Whichever way you cut it, this is music borne of a fierce intelligence, and from an artist with so much to say that if there were a lyric sheet included youâd have to fold it so many times it wouldnât fit in the CD case. It is music that literally bursts at the seams with ideas â songs split and fracture with asides and subsections, broadsides from a mind that canât settle as it grapples with the meaning of love and life in an age of information overload.
Who makes music like this?
Who sabotages their own stadium sized pop hooks with a torrent of their own neurotic internal monologue disguised as a set-the-world-to-rights clarion call and manages to make it a better, more interesting piece of art for it?
Sure, you can be trite and come up with stuff like âheâs like Ed Sheeran crossed with Will Self singing mid-period Bright Eyes - on barbituratesâ or something equally dumb. But the real answer to that question is that nobody makes music quite like this.
And thatâs why you should listen to it.
 Eden Disorder is available to buy on Bandcamp (yay, actual money for the artist), or on major streaming services (boo â few pennies to artist if youâre lucky).
Words: Kurd
Photo: Alan Campbell (live at our first ever âweirdtimeâ secret show)
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