At some point, Matt Berry will be fully appreciated for the innovative musical maverick he truly is. Heard Noises – unbelievably, his 13th album – is yet another example of his fathomless imagination and instrumental prowess.
His records are communal spaces for the strange: every diversion is explored, no byway left untrod; ideas and genres ebb and flow, snapping into focus, occasionally careering out of control.
Whereas 2020’s Phantom Birds was a Dylanesque break-up album and 2021’s The Blue Elephant was more rooted in 60s freakbeat, Heard Noises jauntily moves across styles and influences while remaining unmistakably Berry’s singular, oblique vision.
The scene is set by Who-like opener Why On Fire, which bursts in, all acoustic guitar and piano, with flourishes of wah-wah and drum rolls. With Berry again playing all of the instruments, apart from Craig Blundell on drums, the musical setting is somewhere in the early 70s, but with glimpses of Merseybeat (Silver Rings); Northern Soul (I Gotta Limit, a duet with Kitty Liv from rock’n’roll/R&B throwback trio Kitty Daisy And Lewis), psych-pop (Stay On The Ground) and trippiness (There Are Monsters).
There’s a sense that Berry has created a unique universe of his own
There’s considerable disquiet. I Entered As I Came is an eerie monologue intoned by Poker Face actor Natasha Lyonne over Berry’s spiralling Moog and Mellotron flute. To add to the uneasiness, his mother’s choir (billed as S Club 70) have been sampled to add vocal texture to the piece.
The wyrd filmic folk of Be Alarmed provides the album’s centrepiece, illustrating how the imagery of Berry’s film and TV visual world affects his writing. There’s a couple of interludes thrown in at less than a minute as palate cleansers as well.
Closing track Sky High is a tremendous romp, chiming power chords over a propulsive rhythm, with the repeated nursery rhyme chorus: ‘I love you, it’s true/I love you, I do’; however, before it becomes all too straightforward and commercial, it morphs into a completely different melody, with Jimmy Webb-style builds and a little ragtime clarinet before a superb jazz sax denouement.
Although his acting is kept separate from his pop career, it’s impossible not to imagine Steven Toast crooning these tunes. That’s less a measure of the character’s genius – more a sense that Berry has created a unique universe of his own.
With a cover photograph angled to look right up his nose and an inner gatefold of some of his favourite things (including the actual tarot cards from Bond movie Live And Let Die) Heard Noises is one of the greatest instalments of Berry’s idiosyncratic career so far.
Heard Noises is on sale now via Acid Jazz.
