Review: ‘Eden Disorder EP’ - 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. There’s 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 year’s full-length record ‘Moth’ is fantastic introduction to the sound, but anyone who’s 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-you’re-singing-along-by-the-second-chorus tracks called ‘Sugar In My Coffee’ and ‘Courtney’.
These both appear on a brand new EP called ‘Eden Disorder’ and the recorded versions manage the difficult trick of improving on something that really should be at it best delivered live.
‘Sugar In My Coffee’ shows Johnson at his most playful. The song is a gonzo story about the singer’s struggle as a non-coffee drinker in a world that increasingly seems to revolve around the stuff. It’s 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 “na na na nana, na na na nanana” hook for the rest of the week.
‘Courtney’ tackles a much bigger topic altogether. It’s 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 – a pair of fully spoken word, soul bearing trips to very bottom of Johnson’s psyche. In the hands of anyone else it would be so indulgent it would simply never work – yet these tracks are completely engrossing. They somehow reward repeat listens, despite a total absence of vocal melody. I’m 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 you’d have to fold it so many times it wouldn’t fit in the CD case. It is music that literally bursts at the seams with ideas – songs split and fracture with asides and subsections, broadsides from a mind that can’t 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 “he’s like Ed Sheeran crossed with Will Self singing mid-period Bright Eyes - on barbiturates” or something equally dumb. But the real answer to that question is that nobody makes music quite like this.
And that’s 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 – few pennies to artist if you’re lucky).
Words: Kurd
Photo: Alan Campbell (live at our first ever ‘weirdtime’ secret show)
