Dent May Across The Multiverse

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About

“Don’t wanna move to Southern California / I wasn’t really meant for LA…” So sang Dent May once upon a time, now he’s eating those words with a side of avocado toast in his new Los Angeles bungalow. What made the lifelong Mississippi boy pull up stakes and head west? “No one looks at you funny if you wear a tuxedo to the supermarket.” What he means is he moved there to shake up his surroundings, clear his head, and write the most accomplished record of his young career, the magical mystery tour de force Across the Multiverse.

Following the lead of musical-polymaths-with-LA-ties before him like Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, and Harry Nilsson, Dent’s style on Across the Multiverse will be familiar to fans of his previous work. Yet there’s something more refined about this collection… Stately strings mingle with boogie piano like old friends. Synths weave a celestial backdrop throughout. Every verse, bridge and chorus in its right place, giving it the unmistakable feel of a true songwriting craftsman at work. Lyrically Dent has never been sharper, musing on themes like modern romance (“Picture on a Screen”, “Face Down in the Gutter of Your Love”), existential dread (“Dream 4 Me”, “I’m Gonna Live Forever Until I’m Dead”), and the distance to the moon (“Distance to the Moon”) as he searches for meaning among the infinite scrolling feeds of our 21st century augmented reality. The title track, a duet with Frankie Cosmos, is a deep space love song about finding love beyond impossible boundaries.

Across the Multiverse was written and recorded in a sunny bedroom in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood, with Dent producing and playing nearly every instrument himself. The tracks were selected from dozens of songs written after the LA move, a gold rush of productivity inspired by late nights DJing rare disco funk cuts at local watering holes. It’s his first record for new label Carpark and will be released August 18th.

Artist Bio

“The craft of songwriting is 100% what I’m about,” says Dent May. “That’s what keeps me going.  My goal is to just live a long life and write a ton of good songs.” With the Mississippi-raised, Los Angeles-based musician and pop auteur what you see is what you get: a restless and prolific artist who worships at the altar of a memorable hook and a sharp lyric. There is no gimmick or press-ready narrative about May overcoming past trauma, mental breakdowns, or surpassing insurmountable obstacles. This is simply a guy who is extraordinarily good at making warm and inviting tunes. He’s done it for over 15 years and isn’t stopping anytime soon. 

The 38-year-old artist has made a career of impeccably crafted pop songs starting with his 2009 debut The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele, which came out on Animal Collective’s label Paw Tracks. His follow-ups in 2012’s Do Things and 2013’s Warm Blanket solidified him as a bedroom pop pioneer whose songs felt equally timeless and ahead-of-the-curve. Following a move from Mississippi to Los Angeles, May signed with Carpark and released two increasingly adventurous albums in the psychedelic Across the Multiverse from 2017 and the silky Late Checkout in 2020. 

His latest LP is What’s For Breakfast?, his sixth album and third with Carpark, marks a shift from timeless pop to more guitar-driven rock. The 12-song collection is some of May’s most energetic and immediate tunes yet. It mirrors his relentlessly prolific streak, which includes platinum-certified singles with Eyedress and guest appearances with The Undercover Dream Lovers, Bob Jr., and Paul Cherry. Alongside two other artists, he operates and works out of the recording studio Honeymoon Suite in northeast Los Angeles.