Dent May
Oct 30
$17
Dent May hails from Jackson, Mississippi, born and raised. He grew up singing in church and in school musicals, graduating to pop punk and emo bands in high school, before setting off East to NYU film school. After three semesters in New York, May ditched the big city and returned South, enrolling at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. There May found something like a home. Along with other local musicians, he started the Cats Purring Collective and began playing shows armed only with his ukulele. After meeting Animal Collective during the recording of Merriweather Post Pavilion at local studio Sweet Tea, the band signed May to their Paw Tracks label for his 2009 debut album The Good Feeling Music of Dent May and his Magnificent Ukelele, recorded in a double-wide trailer in the nearby hamlet of Taylor, Mississippi.
May began several self-booked tours of the album, while also booking shows at the legendary Cats Purring Dude Ranch, a converted Boys and Girls Club where he lived with several other musicians. Oxford was May’s home for two more albums, the psychedelic wedding band extravaganzas of Do Things (2012) and Warm Blanket (2013), both on Paw Tracks. In 2015, May sought sunnier skies and made the move to Los Angeles. He founded the studio Honeymoon Suite with Paul Cherry and Pat Jones, home for sessions from artists as diverse as Toro y Moi, TOPS, Magdalena Bay, and Ned Doheny.
In Los Angeles, May furthered honed his sound, embracing a more ’60s pop feel for 2017’s acclaimed Across the Multiverse and the baroque stylings of 2020’s Late Checkout, both for Carpark Records. In 2021, May was approached by the Filipino artist Eyedress, whom May had met on Twitter. Their collaboration, the hazy, sun-drenched “Something About You,” is currently certified platinum and counting. For 2024’s What’s for Breakfast?, May wielded a more stripped-down indie rock sound, without losing a drop of his natural instinct for big, sugary pop hooks.
Dent May’s new record, The Big One, finds him embracing the role of a perennial artist. He ditched his meticulous solo bedroom recording routine for several improvised sessions with Los Angeles musician friends, finding new life and energy in letting loose and relying on others. The album is a burst of bright melancholy, an acceptance of growing older and the joys and possibilities that still lie ahead. It’s the kind of album it takes a career to make, proof that May’s melodic chops have only grown sharper, his pop songcraft in a league of its own. As May says, “I hope to be on stage in a tuxedo singing my little songs when I’m ninety years old.” The world should be so lucky.
Co-founded by Detroit natives Rahill Jamalifard and Lenny Lynch, Habibi got its start in Brooklyn in 2011, earning early raves everywhere from Pitchfork and NME to All Things Considered and The New Yorker, who praised the band for infusing “the Colgate-white glisten of sixties-girl-group pop with an uncensored edge.” Dreamachine, Habibi’s mesmerizing new record releasing on Kill Rock Stars, marks a major sonic evolution for the band, rising beyond the critically acclaimed five-piece’s garage rock roots to arrive at a singular swirl of analog and digital elements that underpin their search for spiritual and physical transcendence. Produced by Tyler Love and longtime collaborator Jay Heiselmann and featuring MGMT multi-instrumentalist James Richardson, the collection draws on a mix of post-punk, experimental pop, and vintage disco, calling to mind Tom Verlaine, Diana Ross, Kate Bush, and Kim Deal, all filtered through the band’s shared love of Middle Eastern psych music. The songs here are their own distinct worlds, each an immersive quest in pursuit of something greater, and the band’s performances are relentless and hypnotic to match, driven by lush synthesizers, sinewy guitars, and a muscular rhythm section. The result is a record as fearless as it is enthralling, an alternatingly fierce and joyous work that ascends to new heights as it reckons with desire and escape, love and surrender, rebellion and reality.
