Kids Grow Up Too Fast

Matthew Dear “Echo”

Matthew Dear’s voice has always had a strange allure – dead-eyed, deadpan, and dead serious all at once. On previous records his voice was like an odd bit of flavor layered over his dark, lurid productions but with Bunny, it’s become the focal point of the music. In “Echo,” he tells a grim story about a young boy speeding from childhood into adulthood not by maturing, but by doing a lot of stuff that’s just not for kids. Dear leans on vocal fry to a comic degree here, digitally nudging it into a grotesque sizzle as his keyboards and clipped drum clicks create an odd unsettling feeling that evokes a druggy drowsiness and the gradual tightening of a mechanical vice.

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