Dent May Is

At first glance, one might be struck by the overwhelming lack of hipster coolness pervading from Dent May. He wears goofy specs, doesn't dress to the nines and, most perplexing, doesn't appear to be the least bit concerned with any of this. It is for precisely this reason that Dent May IS the coolest cat you're bound to meet this year.

It's no secret that I'm not much of a purveyor of videos, and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to come across anything like Lykke Li's Little Bit quite possibly for the rest of my life. And then Dent May came knocking.



All I can say is "wow."

Mr. May's debut, The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele, doesn't drop until next year, but I was able to secure an advance copy when I informed his PR folks that I was considering giving up my career and simply going to parties where I thought Dent might be holding court. Assumedly not wanting their client to have to deal with that kind of hassle, they must have decided free press of the CD review nature was a far better kind than any that might result from a stalking incident.

Dent's ukulele is magnificent, indeed. And there's something captivating about his voice, too, that I'm still trying to pinpoint. It's just a tad too nasal to call it velvety, but it's close. May's voice has the quality of tree sap; once you settle into the groove, you're bound to be trapped by it and the next thing you know, you're featured in some crazy dude's cane handle in a movie about bringing humans from extinction. Yeah, it's exactly like that.

You'd think that after a couple of tracks, you might start to get tired of that uke sound. To the contrary, May has gone to great lengths not to come across like Tiny Tim and the results speak for themselves.

The topics, along with the sound, make me think of times spent amongst learned men amongst the dusty halls of academia. To put it another way, this is music for tobacco pipe smokers that are comfortable using the phrase, "lovey." I'm not sure how to make it any clearer than that. Check out the track below and listen for yourself.

mp3: Meet Me In the Garden