Matt Berry announces new album 'The Blue Elephant' (listen to "Aboard")

Matt Berry, who you may know from What We Do in the Shadows and Toast of London, is also an insanely talented musician whose songs traffic in baroque psychedelia, folk, exotica, jazz, and prog. (If you’ve watched Toast of London, you’ve heard his music.) He’s just announced his ninth album, which is titled The Blue Elephant and will be out May 14 via Acid Jazz.

Where 2020’s terrific Phantom Birds found him in ’70s singer-songwriter mode (with great pedal steel via BJ Cole), The Blue Elephant heads deep into freakbeat psychedelic territory. Matt played everything on the record except for the drums, which were handled by Craig Blundell who’s played on Matt’s last few albums (as well as records by Steven Wilson and others). The first taste is “Aboard,” an instrumental which grooves in the same universe as Scott Walker and Serge Gainsbourg. Check it out below.

In other news, Matt will be bringing Steven Toast to Hollywood for the character’s first new episodes in six years, and a third season of What We Do in the Shadows in on the way too.

TRACKLIST:
1. Aboard
2. Summer Sun
3. Safe Passage
4. Now Disappear
5. Alone
6. Invisible
7. Blues Inside Me (Feat. Rosie McDermott)
8. I Cannot Speak
9. The Blue Elephant
10. Life Unknown
11. Safer Passage
12. Like Stone
13. Story Told
14. Forget Me
15. Now Disappear (Again)