lucre EP

Dean Blunt is in the studio with A$AP Rocky, on the streets with Yung Lean, at the amusement park with Panda Bear, on Mowalola’s moodboard, in Nettspend’s closet, and yet nowhere to be found. Over the past decade or so, he’s become a folk hero for information-era introverts, web trawlers who would rather create than stick around for conversations about what they’ve made. The official spokeswoman of World Music—Blunt’s shadowy self-run record label—is Denna Frances Glass, a fictional character we are meant to believe handles the YouTube channel “dennafrancesglass.” On this channel, “Glass” uploads (and frequently deletes) fleeting efforts by a rotating cast of characters: the Crying Nudes, former World Music signees Bar Italia, DJ Escrow of Babyfather, and others likely to be found trading WeTransfer links with Blunt. The most thrilling are the uploads that prove Blunt’s universe, insular as it may seem, is ever-expanding. Take last summer’s sputtering “bluey vuitton,” in which he loses the IDGAF war over an evilgiane beat. Like it? Fire up your preferred YouTube-to-MP3 service, because it’ll be gone next week.

By the time this review gets published, it’s likely that Blunt’s latest upload, a sparse collection of untitled tracks featuring Elias Rønnenfelt and Vegyn, will be gone, too. But temporary as it may be—in both length (16 minutes) and official online existence—the transience feels apt for the music, which scans as a soundtrack for trying to remember a dream about your crush. lucre marks yet another guitar-centric release for Blunt, whose most recent efforts—notably the Joanne Robertson collaboration Backstage Raver and the data dump Hackney Commercial Waste—foregrounded chorus pedals, demo-level digi-rock, and a lot of lightly-distorted noodling. Blunt doesn’t sing on lucre, but if we are to assume that it’s him playing strings, then this is a focused, compact showcase of his grasp of the guitar ballad: less languid than his earliest attempts, and as tender as any Blunt release has ever sounded.

The tenderness is largely owed to Rønnenfelt, a newly solo balladeer fresh off a wistful guitar album of his own. He and Vegyn have made cameos in Blunt’s music before—Rønnenfelt on “Smile Please” and “Repeat Offenders”; Vegyn on such loosies as “TROLL” and “DOWNER”—though lucre mostly nests somewhere between Heavy Glory and Black Metal 2. Blunt’s has long been a hyper-online take on post-punk, the sound of iPhone mics propped against mini-amps, scuzzy stems laid over stolen drum samples. Rønnenfelt’s solo work implies similar, self-made rock-star inclinations, but he also shares with Blunt a certain trajectory: revered for rougher edges, freshly showing a softer side. Five years ago, track 2’s instrumental might have fit snugly on the dissociative Roaches 2012-2019; on lucre, it goes from lovelorn to lovestruck, Blunt’s baritone exchanged for Rønnenfelt’s doe-eyed drawl. “Since I’ve been lying, I don’t mean a thing I say,” Rønnenfelt wails at one point, and it’s almost jarring: an extremely Dean Bluntian sentiment, delivered with extremely not Dean Bluntian desperation. Blunt’s footprint is most evident in the EP’s ragtag riffage, buoyed by production we can probably attribute to Vegyn. I’m not sure whether to call it track 3 or 4—a very Bluntian thing: no official tracklist!—but there’s a moment, around 4:49, where a brooding slow burn suddenly sputters into what sounds like Lou Reed covering a Cardigans song. It’s a sly twist in a record full of them, proof that Blunt and friends always have a few tricks up their sleeves.