Matt DeMello
There's No Place Like Nowhere: Ten Years Later
Ten years ago, New York musician Matt DeMello made a record so delightfully unhinged that his friend/producer now teaches it in a college class on music production. "He'll play the record and then say, 'Look what this asshole put me through.' That's the class," DeMello says, laughing. "I'll never pay the rent with this music, but that is the best compliment I've ever been paid in my life."
A decade later, DeMello is releasing a 10th-anniversary edition of that record, There's No Place Like Nowhere, a more fully realized, polished version of what he calls his "broken concept album" about a girl who moves to New York City (a stand-in for DeMello) where she struggles with romance, substance abuse, family, and the foibles of the human race as a whole. A singer/instrumentalist who grew up at the feet of musical madmen like Brian Wilson and Frank Zappa, DeMello initially infused the haunting suite of songs with equal parts Gershwin and Yes. And, on October 23rd, 2024, he'll introduce a whole new generation to his quixotic masterwork — a version as close to his madcap vision as he could get.
DeMello grew up in Rhode Island and was fed on a steady diet of prog-rock, math rock, and musical theater. A teen who favored Warren Zevon over the more contemporary fare, the musician played in pop-punk bands all throughout high school while honing his jazz piano skills and performing in community theater from a young age. It was a battle to nail down a sound, though — one year, he was melding R&B with hardcore; another, he was camping it up in Rocky Horror Picture Show. "With No Place – I was trying to find a balance between all the influences I had as a young kid between theater and various pop musics," he says.
During a stint with the indie music platform BreakThru Radio (also known as BTRToday), DeMello was exposed to an inspiring array of genres — and many musicians' relentless grind for the love of grinding. "Guys like R. Stevie Moore struck me as shamans in the pure Joseph Campbell sense of the word 'shaman.' That's what they do," he says. "They record compulsively whether or not they see a dime from it. I heard my whole future when I ran into those artists." After he was laid off from that gig, he kept up that rigor, vowing to release a record before he turned 27 — what would become There's No Place Like Nowhere.
In 2012, DeMello reached out to producer Alex Busi (of that college class fame) with six demos he'd recorded on piano and acoustic guitar into his MacBook microphone. Together, they spent the weekend at Busi's parents' house while they were on vacation, recording on their fancy grand piano reel-to-reel, bringing new warmth to the song sketches. They then brought the album into the Busi's studio under a Chinese restaurant, where they spent a year changing layering in vocals, hollow-body guitar, and an orchestra of synthesizers. "For two hard-working stoners, it was great! You do a couple of bong hits in the studio, and you have food right upstairs," DeMello jokes.
Standout tracks include a glorious storm of keys, "An Inkling on a Rooftop/Between Myself and All My Friends," which DeMello imagined as a rock & roll "Rhapsody in Blue." A mixture of dad rock and the divine, the largely instrumental track set the tone for the rest of the record. "I was trying to achieve something joyful — something would carry that joy through every song," DeMello says.
The syrupy "Save Me (the Back Road to Euphoria)" tells the tale of a woman who meets a man during a wedding — and a self-destructive spiral. More traditionally rock & roll than classical, the track harks back to the tunes DeMello grew up on as a kid. "It's pure, riffy indie rock," he says. And then there's the deceptively sweet "Scum of the Earth," a riff on Tom Waits' "Widow's Grove" that DeMello likens to a "Presbyterian hymn" about the sorry state of the world.
"I still think that song punches," he says. "People might listen to it and go, 'You really tapped into an ability to sum up how horrible the last 20 years got.' Like 'All You Need is Love,' it's very much an aspirational song; I'm not qualified to have written it. If you dig into my life, I have not lived up to this song. But if you take it as 'this is the song that I had to write to convince me to be the person who gets better'? Yeah, this is the one."
After recording, DeMello rather unceremoniously uploaded the six-song album to Facebook, but it really started taking off in 2019 when he shared it on Twitter under the hashtag #freealbumcodes, a veritable watering hole for voracious music fans. A long-time haunter of New York institution the Sidewalk Cafe (RIP) — where American Idol contestants and Yoko Ono aspirees shared the same stage — the hashtag was a revelation for DeMello. "I found the aesthetic sense in the free album code space," he says. "One week it's noise, the next week it's a jangle band. Nobody's getting famous here, but everybody's being themselves, regardless of what genre it is."
There's No Place Like Nowhere found a following there, with a small cassette run of the original record selling out fast. Fast-forward to 2024, and DeMello decided to brush up those songs — with help from Busi's shiny, new gear — and finally give them a proper release. "This album has already accomplished so much — giving me an underlying audience of people who really fit that cool, uncool kind of static parameter and will follow me through all my crazy left turns," he says. "Because I think if you buy into this record, there's nothing else I'm gonna throw at you that much to throw you off."
"Art is never done," he adds. "They can listen to the original if they want, but with this release, I've arrived closer to my vision." As for 10 years from now? Only time will tell where DeMello will wind up. As for his next trick? He’s working on an album fully produced by adjacentwave trap beat artist Noexbeats. “I know Twitter is dying, but it’s really great to meet so many interesting artists in the last burp of this scene,” says DeMello. “I’ve been a part of so many so far – you have to just enjoy them while it lasts.”
- Brenna Ehrlich, Rolling Stone
Available for pre-order today, full release 11/19! Enjoy!