Yellow Shoots is the moniker of Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Greg Matthews, who releases his debut album everything today. He’s been kicking around since 2015 with two EPs to his name already and honestly, we wish we’d found him earlier.
The artist’s first long-player is a proud statement of his synth-laden style; a funky love child of Chromeo and Prince, dunked into a pool of Jimi Hendrix distortion. Yeah, we like it.
Immerse yourself in the funky fields of Yellow Shoots’ everything, a deeply infectious debut steaming with red-hot instrumental work.
“This album is special to me,” Matthews shared. “I’ve gone through a lot of transitions in making music in the past years and I think this sound really sums up what I’ve been trying to convey as an artist.”
The Yellow Shoots sound is deeply summertime; and appropriately the LP’s second track is named make it to the summer. Given it’s the depths of winter here I’m unsure if I ever will, but damn this song has me pining for sunny skies.
everything is concerned with love, imagination, perception, and how the three are best served as a meal. Matthews experiences synaesthesia, and expectedly the album explodes with colour at every turn. Timeless instrumentals and a bombastic vocal performance are in heaving tandem – Matthews’ desire for romantic cohesion has no doubt fed into his songwriting.
wild fire is a favourite, which you may have already caught as a single. island in the sky is a statement finisher to the album in which Matthews’ strips back his performance into something more progressive and psychedelic.
Altogether it’s an incredibly strong showing, one that would find legs in the disco fever of the ’80s as easily as it would in Australia’s current psych rock obsessiveness. Here’s hoping everything catches on back home for Yellow Shoots, it’s more than deserving of the recognition.
everything is out now.
