Stream: Big Search, ‘Here Comes the Night’

Kevin Bronson on February 15th, 2019

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Big Search has always been an apt name for the solo project of Matt Popieluch. A player for the likes of Fool’s Gold, Cass McCombs, Sky Ferreira, Papercuts and Glasser and the former frontman of beloved L.A. quartet Foreign Born, Popieluch is a seeker who writes songs about what might be over the next horizon, or what might have been down that other fork in life’s road.

“Slow Fascination” — out April 12 via Danger Mouse’s 30th Century Records — will be the fourth Big Search full-length dating back to 2010, and judging from the first single “Here Comes the Night,” it won’t quite sound like anything Popieluch has done. As he did on his 2018 single “To Feel in Love,” the songwriter sets aside his cherished 12-string guitar in favor of a harpsichord and analog synth. The lush production comes via Rob Barbato (Kevin Morby, Girlpool, McCombs), and the album features guest turns from Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste, the Shins’ James Mercer and Kacey Johansing.

The album comes after a period of personal turmoil and … well, searching. Popieluch’s marriage ended. He rented out his house and traveled. He trimmed weed on a California farm. He house-sat for a producer friend. He worked for a Hollywood soup kitchen. And he wrote and recorded.

The swirling, dramatic progressions of “Here Comes the Night,” which features Droste, feel as if Popieluch is circling, watching, waiting. Specifically, for a certain dark cloud to pass. He calls the song “an ode to the anxiety hanging in the air since the election, where both real and imagined catastrophe are constantly looming.”

Wait with him, while marveling at that which is forever beautiful.

||| Stream: “Here Comes the Night”