Matt Pryor: The Salton Sea: Hazy Blue Vinyl LP w/Signed Photo (Import)

Kansas City, Missouri native, Matt Pryor, is a household name for anyone who was attuned to the second and third waves of emo. His genre-defining band, The Get Up Kids, were among a small and legendary group that has shaped the musical landscape for years. On his latest album, Matt Pryor has presented the world with The Salton Sea, an album that’s the continuation of a decades-long love affair with music and being outright obsessed with songwriting. It’s presented in a style that is more reminiscent of the works of Paul Westerberg and Red House Painters, laden with Pryor’s signature style, whose DNA is deeply rooted in artists like Elvis Costello and The Afghan Whigs. 
The period of time when the songs were written were some of the darkest days of Pryor’s life. After spending six months in a downward spiral in what he sarcastically refers to as the penultimate moments of his “drinking career”, Pryor finally hit rock bottom. Now out the other side, Pryor has written a beautiful composite left on the shoreline for all of us to enjoy: The Salton Sea. 

Pryor’s latest songs have a timeless quality that makes you instantly nostalgic for strangers’ memories that unfold as narrative stories, and as a listener, you’re left wondering what these moments are all about—how will they unfold? This is undoubtedly due to the fact that along with sobriety, Pryor has found solace in writing for the sake of writing, a practice that he keeps up with daily— usually before dawn. If there’s a silver lining to all of this, one can glean that nothing bad will come from finding more creative outlets to calm the devil that sits on your shoulder, especially when that person has been writing the soundtrack of so many people’s lives for the last thirty years.