Dent May

There is an ecstatic melancholy in Dent May’s music. The bedroom pop auteur’s songs are both bittersweet and exuberant, breaking your heart while you can’t help but sing along.

Over six albums, May has built a wildly diverse discography spanning 17 years. He has typically worked alone, assembling perfect pop gems on his laptop, playing nearly every instrument himself. But when he began preparations for his new album, May’s tried and true process suddenly felt stale.

“I was so comfortable in my creative routine,” says May, “that it was hard to push myself to try anything new. But after messing around with a few songs, I just said ‘forget the computer’ and started sending voice memos to my friends.”

May booked a series of sessions at Honeymoon Suite, the Los Angeles studio May co-owns with the album’s producer, Paul Cherry. He invited a rotating cast of musician friends to the studio, without rehearsal or planning. Improvisation was everything. Whatever happened each day became the record. On The Big One, joined by a live band of his fellow LA music lifers, Dent May decided to step out of the bedroom and into the world.

“It’s about building a lifetime of making music,” says May. “I believe that if you keep going, good things will happen. But sometimes you have to shake things up a little.”

The Big One brings together both the scrappy DIY ethos of Elephant 6 Collective and early The Magnetic Fields with May’s lifelong affinity for the great ’70s singer-songwriters like Harry Nilsson and Ram-era Paul McCartney. The songs balance a clear-eyed view of the world with a cautious optimism, looking at the everyday experiences of disappointment and heartbreak with a sense of possibility for the good that may still come. Things might seem bleak, May tells us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be thankful for our brief time here on Planet Earth.

Take the second track, “I Remember…”, for example. The song is a recollection of a long-past relationship, inspired by the bittersweet nostalgia of Fellini’s Amarcord and Joe Brainard’s I Remember. But rather than linger in regret, May and his band conjure a DIY Electric Light Orchestra for a song that feels more like a celebration than a post-mortem. It becomes an appreciation of the good times as well as the bad, gratitude that the relationship even happened at all: “Do you ever look back on us/And smile just a little?”

“Second Wind” is a tribute to the possibilities of a night on the town, especially one where you don’t really feel like going out. The song opens with May exhausted, pining for his bed over a piano lullaby, before the drums kick him out of his revery and the tempo doubles. “Let’s hit the town for the evening,” May sings. “Fill up our hearts with some feeling.” The wry “I Don’t Like You (But I Love You)” features the band at their absolute height, as May portrays unrequited love with the dogged hope of a true romantic: “All alone each night/Keep the dream alive/Just give me a chance/And I’ll show you what real love is like.”

The title track is the beating heart of the record. Over a steady drumbeat, piano, and accordion, a melancholy May sings, “The big one’s coming, the big one’s on its way,” promising disaster. But May won’t wallow in the misery: “Thank the Lord for all my friends/We can make it ’til the end/No we can’t stop now/Who knows? Tomorrow it all could turn around.” For May, hope comes in the form of others.

“My music is very much for other people,” says May. “A popular line I hear from other songwriters is, ‘This is all for me. This is my diary. This is my therapy.’ For me, music is about communication. Sharing it with other people is the entire point.”

It’s with this joyful melancholy Dent May draws in the world. Everything might be ending, the planet could be careening off into chaos, but tonight there’s a party down the block and you’re invited. Be sure and bring your friends.

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.