Singer songwriter Matt Maltese today announces his new album “Hers”, to be released on Friday 16^th May via The Orchard. The London-based artist’s sixth studio album is his most insular and intimate to date, and his first fully self-produced effort since second album Krystal. Hers exists in a twilight world, pairing heartfelt songwriting and dry witticism with the gentle quiver of strings, a flourish of woodwind or the sound of a creaking old piano.

 Though its wounds may still feel tender to the touch, Maltese made “Hers” with several years’ perspective on the events that inspired it, processing the complexities of a serious romantic relationship and its ending through the rearview.

“I’ve written a lot of music that comes from a place of infatuation, but this record was written on reflection of a much longer-term love. The complications and wonderful roads that that goes through and the more informed heartaches that come out of it. I got to really reflect and slave over it… It’s a bit like having a year to write a really important email,” he says.

 Matt also shares new single and video ‘Always Some MF’, the second track to be lifted from “Hers”, following the yearning ‘Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow’. On ‘Always Some MF’ he plays the faux tough guy in the face of the knotty jealousy that occasionally rears its head in a loving relationship: ‘he’d have to be clinically dead to not want you’, he croons.

 ‘Always Some MF’ will be accompanied by a striking music video, directed by Prasanna Puwanarajah, and starring actor Nadia Parkes and choreographer / actor Ira Mandela Siobhan alongside Matt, who turns his hand to fencing, vying for the affections of his lover. The video will premiere today via YouTube at 5pm GMT – watch here.

As anyone who has fallen for the charms of Maltese’s music over the past decade can attest, his catalogue displays his talents as one of the most quietly artful songwriters at work right now. Much like similarly droll ascendants such as Randy Newman or his most obvious current counterpart Father John Misty, lurking beneath Maltese’s sumptuous melodies and classic songwriting chops there’s always been a line or turn of phrase that snags, stopping you in your tracks, causing a double take and – more often than not – raising a smile. “Of course, I think songs with honesty and emotional weight are powerful, but I think lightness is an important counterpoint to me,” he says. “You can have the cry, but then there’s the turn and the smile.” 

Maltese’s wit is always present across these eleven tracks, but it’s wielded more sparingly. More often, it comes across in the self-deprecation and vulnerability these songs display, and what that in turn reveals. “I’ve said this before, but I do think the best work is where you allow yourself to look pathetic,” Maltese says. “The job is not to be the coolest guy, the job is to be vulnerable. On this record, I think I’ve done more of that.”

 “I’m British enough to feel a slight shame of writing so many love songs in the past,” he adds. “Maybe the more interesting thing on paper would have been to go to the other side of the world and write a concept album about prehistoric creatures or something, but at the end of the day, we’re all human, and love and people are things we’re all continually affected by. It’s my job as a songwriter to excavate the things in my life, and that’s what I was going through.”