We all pick up on things that no one ever intended to send. A late night radio station, a random message, a song you didn’t know you were listening to, a look from someone across the room. Matthew Shadley Brauer’s “Satellite Sky” is the record that dares to actually hear something real through the noise. Seven months on from the guitar-led “The Great Divide” and the style hasn’t really changed so much as the distance. He’s pulled back from the instrument, looked up at the sky and the music has become more spacious, more laid back and more genuine.
I’ve already listened to a few of his recent albums. The new sound is very different to what we’d heard previously, but I have to be honest and say I quite like this new direction. The nine tracks of Satellite Sky are a glorious melding of post-rock, psychedelia, dream pop and electronics with vintage synths, a Mellotron, fretless bass and a guitar that can either just whisper or go off like a distant bolt of lightning. The end result is cinema without a screen, a very mature and very profound piece of work about yearning, silence and the eternal search for something that’s just out of reach.
The album was recorded at Gravity Studios in Kitty Hawk (on the coast of North Carolina). You can hear the ocean right there, it’s absolutely audible. There’s a tremendous amount of space and breathing in the music. Brauer is a very experienced musician, having been in the Cincinnati scene, having been in the Matthew Shadley Band, a long pause and then back in the early 2020s. On this new album he gives us the same sense of infinite space, the same sense of cosmic melancholy and the same kind of texture as you find on Pink Floyd’s very best records.
Everything starts with “Distant Light”. It’s a very slow piece, very meditative in its approach and works absolutely like a perfect radio tuner in that you can hear it seeping out of the ether, gradually building up until there’s a steady pulse and then the guitars with a light chorus come in. I think it’s a very good opening track in that it establishes the parameters of the album. It doesn’t rush the melody at all. Brauer doesn’t drive it forward. He lets it find its own way and when it does finally straighten out you get a very odd feeling, as if you’re hearing a signal coming in from a long way off.
Out of that vastness comes “Summer Rose’ the warmest, most welcoming track on the tracklist. Transparent guitar, soft fretless bass and the tenderness of dream pop all speak of love as a force that brings you back to wholeness. The vocals here are much closer and more intimate than on the opening track, quite unprocessed with a slight rasp on the higher notes. It’s all about the summer rose, the wind and the cleansing rain, the fragility of feeling. The final line of the chorus is a confession that the lead has finally come back to himself.
“Street Corner Prophets” is all light irony and jazziness. The meeting with the street preacher is in fact a mirror to the protagonist himself who sees in himself a “modern day Pharisee” (a man who knows all the right words but is still in the dark). “I’m as lost as a modern day Pharisee” is a very genuine line. It’s absolutely alive in terms of arrangement: a sprightly, jazz-inflected rhythm section, atmospheric guitars and keyboards, processed vocals and an improvised guitar solo that seems to be arguing with itself. The move into the finale is very good indeed. The rhythm section breaks down for a moment, the guitar just hangs there and the mockery dissolves into respect. The man comes to the realisation that someone else’s certainty can be a virtue and that his own doubts are not a failing but the very thing that enables a search.
Signals from space come in on the title track “Satellite Sky’ which is in itself a full on sonic onslaught of post-rock layers, static and the low drone of synths. The satellite communication metaphor is spot on in that it’s a desperate attempt to cut through the sheer volume of information and get some real live contact. The effect of a big, rolling guitar solo cutting through that digital noise is that the signal has finally got through. The contemplative “Nocturnal Waves” leaves you quite alone with the night sea. It’s all noble piano, lush fretless bass and shimmering guitar. It’s a piece that really does breathe in with the tides. There’s a very beautiful, very intimate vocal coda at the end which is just a whisper really, a very peaceful full stop. The man is looking up at the stars and the night waves and finds his place in the universe. The presence of the person he loves is the thing that brings him peace. That coda is absolutely perfect, it’s just an exhale.
In “Satellite Sky” the songs tell a very clear story: “Summer Rose” is all about love as a form of rebirth; “Street Corner Prophets” is about faith and doubt; “Satellite Sky” is about being connected in the midst of all the noise; “Nocturnal Waves” is about harmony with the world and with eternity. The instrumental pieces “La Bomba Fantasma”, “Relay #1” and “Relay #2” provide the perfect air; they really do stretch the space and take the atmosphere right to the limit. They all work together to form one massive theme really: the search for meaning, for connection and for a sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves.
In “Satellite Sky” Matthew Shadley Brauer has managed to bring the search for meaning, the search for love and the search for faith into one sonic ecosystem.
Published in partnership with SubmitHub
