This album actually finds Maltese in a higher register on most of the songs than past albums and has arrangements that remind me of those other British crooners, the Beatles. “You don’t have to outrun the bear / I’ll feed it me for you / You don’t have to be someone else / I like you best as you.” He knows how to be simultaneously clever and heartfelt, and his songs are often like the cologne or perfume of a lover, so evocative and romantic. “It’s a mystery / that I would pick you ten out of nine times.”

His songs are also self-aware and sensitive to the difficult times that we are living in. Songs like “We Need To Talk,” which is about having that talk in a relationship because “I’ve gotta choose between everything and everyone.” Sly songs about inviting a lover up for coffee, like “The Oldest Trick In The Book.” And songs like, “Rat Race”: “What a nice day for a rat race / everybody pulling the same face / have a nice day in the rat race / everybody knows how the game’s played.”

“And I want what I can’t have / But I don’t want what I can / That’s the recipe for being alone,” he ends the album on “Krakow.” After all of the romantic sentiments on the album, we find Maltese alone at the end of the album. Perhaps that is the life of an artist and performer who has made it to whatever degree. After all of the connection created by their songs, it is often just the artist alone at the end of the day. The songs show an ingenious soul who can’t conquer life’s existential problems with his cleverness.

It is a beautiful album and best listened along with his other recent records, as this is a sort of interesting direction for the crooner to take, a reinvention of sorts. I think he’d do well to marry his new sound with his old, find a sort of middle ground between the low and high registers. Although it is an impressive group of songs, I find myself gravitating to his other stuff more. But for the uninitiated, it would hold up quite well on its own.

Order Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow by Matt Maltese HERE