The hardest part of listening to my friend Caleb Moore’s new album is trying to put a name to it. Indie rock, electronic, soul, alternative pop, and R&B are somehow all encompassed in his dexterous 13-track debut, Matter of Time, but the best way to describe it may be this: Unencumbered.
The album swings freely between genres with an incongruous harmony that’s reminiscent of Gorillaz’s self-titled debut, softened by a contemplative calmness that’s more Daniel Caesar. The first track, “DAMAGE THE LOOK,” is a taste of Moore’s range, opening with a brooding drum line that underpins a back-and-forth between bright guitar riffs and trance-like vocals.
It’s followed by the album’s second single, “UP NOW,” a crescendoing alt-pop-rock bop, and “ALL I NEED,” three hypnotic minutes of orchestral synths that tug at my heart strings similarly to Kenny Beats’s “Last Words.” Moore goes acoustic for “BOB DYLAN WAR SONG,” evokes a Black Keys-esque sonic fuzz on “DRUNK AGAIN” and rounds out his repertoire with “BØRN,” an addictively melodic rap song that flexes his witty lyricism.
“The album being so many different genres is the truth about how I make music, so the through line is me,” Moore says. The other through line is time. In an unusual move, Moore arranged the track list in the order that he created each song, making this a truly chronological album that puts you inside the pendulum of his creative process.
And as much as the album is an ode to 28-year-old Moore’s talent as a multi-instrumentalist and multi-hyphenate, his lyrics are often an homage to the people he holds closest: I count the minutes all backwards, and wrote you in all of my passwords, he croons about his fiancé in the piano-backed guitar ballad, “WAY YOU MAKE ME FEEL.”
A film composer by trade, Moore wrote, recorded, produced, and mixed Matter of Time all himself, at breakneck pace, while at an artist’s residency last summer. He made the album’s first 11 songs in his first 12 days there, with the last two—“BODY BREAKER,” an electronically tinged R&B ballad, and “MICHELANGELO,” a raspy, mellow bookend—finished soon after.
“My experiment with this album was ‘What if your first instinct every time is the right one?’ And figure out if that’s wrong later,” Moore says. On Matter of Time, he surrenders to a level of vulnerability that feels rare for any artist, let alone one who’s just getting started. Listen to the album below.
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