Matt Maltese announces new album ‘Driving Just To Drive’

Matt Maltese

Matt Maltese has announced details of his fourth album, ‘Driving Just To Drive’, and shared its title track.

The singer-songwriter’s new LP will be released on April 28 via Nettwerk and follows 2021’s ‘Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow’.

Discussing the new album, Maltese said: “I think getting older and busier, you can sometimes create a rewards-system in your brain, where every action needs to have a reason for doing that action. But there’s also a whole new fresh load of doom out there that sometimes can put our obsession with personal ‘growth’ into perspective.

“I often live in a building-block mindset where I need to do this thing so I can do that thing and that means I’ll have a chance at that other thing. In the meantime, there are all these uncontrollable (and maybe even unchangeable) realities, like a wealth-bias financial system and an exponentially heating world, that could render all the productivity pointless.”

He added: “I thought a lot back to being younger and how much more I used to do things just to do them. Playing on a playground as a kid or just going for a drive and listening to music in the car. I used to love stuff with no sense of an outcome, with no sense of self-imposed necessity. I think it’s important to have some of that in our lives.”

Listen to ‘Driving Just To Drive’ below.

1. ‘Mother’
2. ‘Irony Would Have It’
3. ‘Florence’
4. ‘Mortician’
5. ‘Museum’
6. ‘Widows’
7. ‘Coward’
8. ‘Driving Just To Drive’
9. ‘Hello Black Dog’
10. ‘Suspend Your Disbelief’
11. ‘But Leaving Is’

Reviewing ‘Good Morning It’s Now Tomorrow’ upon its release in 2021, NME wrote: “The most resonant moments remain the most simple and heartfelt; the vivid concept of ‘Outrun The Bear’ – which sees our narrator declare that he would offer himself up to a grizzly creature in order to save his lover – is admittedly silly on paper.

“But as Maltese sifts through his imagination to construct a new form of intimacy, the song translates to a celebration of the album’s overarching qualities – hope, release, and a desire to grow – all of which lead to a new beginning.”

Revisit NME‘s In Conversation video about the album with Maltese here.

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