Gothic Theatre
The Russian Futurists
The Russian Futurists
Let’s Get Ready to Crumble
“4.5 stars (out of 5). The Method of Modern Love is one of the most melodically seductive and exhilarating records of recent times.”—Uncut U.K.
“…bursts with electronic pop joy and a sense of wonder worthy of The Flaming Lips.”
- The Guardian U.K.
“…even when they are a shambles onstage, they’re still playing the most opulent and indulgent pure synth-pop with hooks, hooks, hooks!”—eye Weekly Toronto
“Have you heard the Russian Futurists record?… It’s, like, one $99 keyboard with a drum machine, and it’s really poppy and catchy.”—Peter Buck, R.E.M.
The Method of Modern Love, the Russian Futurists’ debut CD, became a left-field pop sensation in 2001. Written, recorded and produced in his childhood bedroom for little more than the cost of an evening’s bar tab, 23-year-old Matthew Adam Hart was swiftly acclaimed for his prodigious sonic resourcefulness. Critics and the public alike also recognized in Hart one of the most impressive compositional minds to emerge in years—the romantic eye of a Stephin Merritt or Leonard Cohen married to the epic melodic sweep of recent Flaming Lips or vintage Human League.
If Method was an unintentional concept record about a sensitive postgraduate’s disastrous love life, its highly anticipated follow-up, Let’s Get Ready to Crumble, finds Hart no less obsessed with affairs of the heart, but more willing to find the comedy in his quixotic tragedies. The album’s title is, itself, a play on the professional sports world’s pre-game declaration, “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!”
“I didn’t want these songs to seem like I was emotionally treading water,” says Hart, now 25. “I think any theme that Crumble may have is unintentional, but there is definitely a feeling of resolution—for me, anyway. I feel that with age I’m getting better at being logical and not letting my heart get as thoroughly trampled on, or at least understanding it better if it happens. I’m not the defeatist mourner I was on Method, but those topics still inspire most of my writing. Everyone knows loss, and almost everyone knows what it’s like to be in love, so that’s what I like to write about.”
Hart’s raison d’etre is laid bare up-front on Crumble’s joyous title track, which opens the album: “I do pop ‘cause that’s what my heart goes/I don’t call it art, no sir/That denotes that when I wrote it I had other motives.” The album is bookended by “Your Life on Magnetic Tape,” a wry but heartfelt comment on the craft of the pop songwriter that near-as-perfectly describes Hart’s life since taking up music full-time after moving to Toronto from his remote hometown in Peterborough, Ontario. “It’s your life wrapped up on magnetic tape/And it’s a symphony of sounds you can’t escape/Each one represents a portion of the past/The reels go spinning like sands through the hourglass.”
“It does seem a little absurd to make a living off of telling people your business,” Hart quips. Of his new life in Toronto, he adds: “Spending time with different people helped me gain insight into relationships and love, and I learned that everyone you share powerful feelings with can offer you valuable information about life and yourself. This may explain why there isn’t one central theme throughout all of the songs. Different experiences with different people were enough to inspire entire songs, and opened the door for me to write about things I had never been a part of.”
But listeners needn’t worry that Hart’s success has made his songs the self-referential gripes of a working musician. Like its predecessor, Crumble is full of the wide-eyed wonder and musical adventurousness for which The Russian Futurists has became one of the most reverently spoken new names in pop. In songs like “It’s Actually Going to Happen” and “It’s Not Really Cold When it Snows,” one can only conclude that Hart has simply become better in every way—while still adhering to the low-budget, lone-gun approach of his debut.
“The Russian Futurists has always just been me writing and producing exactly what I would want to hear, so I didn’t want to mess with that by adding new variables such as other people or changes to the sound,” he explains. “I’m sure over time, as I become a better producer/engineer, the sound quality will change, but as far as the formula, this way just works best for me. If I fail, I only have myself to blame. I’m pretty poor as well, so I don’t think a bigger budget for recording was much of an option, anyway.”
It doesn’t matter. For whatever Let’s Get Ready to Crumble lacks in the expensive gloss that many people associate with modern pop, it more than makes up for in wit, emotion, and Hart’s own fully-realized notion of beauty. Long may he continue to pursue the elusive, express the inexpressible.
