The eponymous Mathew in Mathew’s Hidden Museum is Mathew Bethancourt, best known as the guitarist/vocalist of reignited fuzz rockers Josiah, who in 2022 issued We Lay on Cold Stone (review here) as their first full-length in 15 years. Formed at the turn of the century, that band released three albums and a kind of wrap-up session/live collection during their initial run in the aughts, preceding and then concurrent to Bethancourt‘s participation in the first three LPs from The Kings of Frog Island, released 2005-2010. After leaving that band, Bethancourt would form Cherry Choke, at first in more of a garage rock vein, then later moving into a deeper-hued psychedelia on 2015’s Raising the Waters (review here) before themselves (not quite) fading out, leading to the return of Josiah.

As that band resolidified and moved toward their eventual comeback, Mathew’s Hidden Museum emerged in 2020 with the EP Golden Echoes (review here), a home-recording solo-project for Bethancourt to explore reaches that, for one reason or another, didn’t seem to fit anywhere else. In his Interstellar Smoke Records-released self-titled debut, Mathew’s Hidden Museum, he presents 10 songs and 41 minutes of boldly captured scope, intense creative drive, melodic psych atmospheres, and a bit of boogie for good measure. Some is in conversation with his past work, as the lead single and second track “Naked and Rolled in that Rotten Dirt” (premiered here) shoves and stomps throughout its three minutes with a Josiah-worthy groove, even if all that echo and later deconstruction takes it elsewhere ultimately. Other pieces, like the intro “The Resurrectionist” or the later, ultra-brief “Sinphony” and the closer “(Golden) Kiss Divine” are more ambient and textural, weaving flowing wavelengths of drone, guitar, and synth/keys/organ/etc. to cinematic effect.

Through it all, the temptation is to say that Bethancourt retains a master’s hand when it comes to craft, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of Mathew’s Hidden Museum. Rather, while still the auteur of the project from the basic songwriting through the entire process of recording, Bethancourt seems to will himself to let go of some, not all, of his impulses toward structure and making songs in a given style. To be sure, Mathew’s Hidden Museum is a work of heavy psychedelia, but whether it’s the play with sonic hot-shit arrogance in “Born on the 3rd of July” or the almost-entirely-drift “Echoes Flow,” there are multiple avenues taken to get there, and to further the cliché, sometimes Bethancourt seems to take his hands off the wheel, all in the name of adding a bit of danger and unpredictability to the proceedings. The songs feel built up during the recording process, layers on layers, guitars spanning channels in ultra-fuzzy leads, piano looped in “Golden,” and so on, but as Bethancourt shows with “The Voyage of Psyche,” which is the longest inclusion here at 7:20, he’s also capable of constructing a legitimate jam on the foundation of his own drumming; improvising with himself even as he works to the plot in his own head.

Indeed, doing so seems part of what allows Mathew’s Hidden Museum to so comfortably reside in different styles; there is a purity in its nebulousness, a kind of plan-of-no-plan that inherently can never be as open as it is here again since Bethancourt will invariably have some firmer idea of what the project is after this first album, wherever its outward progression may lead, whenever, if ever, it does. It is of all the more value to the listener, then, to engage with these layers and variations in structure and intent, to find the places Mathew’s Hidden Museum is charging through and the places it isn’t, and to try to understand how songs like “Golden” and “(Golden) Kiss Divine” are speaking to each other and why or why not. It is doubly fortunate that the record allows for this interaction in its spaciousness, its diversity of approach, and its richness of performance.

Laughter begins “The Resurrectionist” along with a few mouthy noises — maybe a ‘meow’ tossed in there quickly — before the first notes of a fuzzy lead establish the dirge. A kick drum thuds, first with the guitar, then by itself, then rejoined. Harder distortion enters over a declining progression and is grandiose but raw, bordering on the first wash but not quite going all the way in and, at two minutes long, too short to really be a drone. But the long fade and stretch of silence before the troubled piano glimpse at the start of “Naked and Rolled in that Rotten Dirt” makes it a substantial mood-setting piece just the same. The second cut is soon onto a funk that resides as much in the emphasis of the snare drum hits as in its fuzzed-out guitar and bass, turning hypnotic before the lead lines come in to confirm the party underway, harmonies ripping back and forth, one channel then the other, setting the stage for Bethancourt‘s coming preach. He’s post-Dave Wyndorf, post-’70s soul, but echoing and swirling effects give a decisively lysergic bent around that well-grounded bass, drums and guitar.

Vocals move into a call and response, guitar effects are layered in, lines coming and going. Some cymbal crash is dared at 2:20 and seems like a good idea so Bethancourt follows that impulse through the next turn on the toms as more twisted distortion enters, a preface to the title-line intonation — a tale of who the fuck knows what — as the placement of “Naked and Rolled in That Rotten Dirt” feels as though Bethancourt is using heavy rock as a gateway to the multifaceted fare to come while still sounding fervent in his weirdo purposes. It’s only three minutes long, just one more than the intro, but “Naked and Rolled in That Rotten Dirt” is emblematic of the detail put into the construction of these songs more generally, and its somewhat madcap spirit carries even into the quietest moments of Mathew’s Hidden Museum. As even the name of the project/record hints, there’s something playful about the entire affair. Fun, and perhaps a bit subversive in that.

Bethancourt enters “Golden” sooner on vocals, but already by then the mood is different than “Naked and Rolled in that Rotten Dirt,” driven by stomp on the piano with more space in the drums. His voice is lower in register over the key dum-dum-da-dumdum that will repeat throughout the five-minute stretch, either looped or played straight through. Taps on a pan or some such trade channels through the verse, rhythmic in placement as well as in themselves. What might be melodica enters at the two-minute mark, then everything solidifies around an explosion led by voice layers, more taps on pan, and gradually evens out as that central rhythmic piano and drum figure comes forward again, having been buried under the brighter guitar but there all the while, peppered with flecks of guitar noise, not quite chords. Held organ lines and more prominent thuds after 3:30 make a duly horror-show setting for a return of the laughter from “The Resurrectionist,” as it turns out you’ve been in the dungeon or maybe it’s the laboratory all along and nostalgia was the trap that put you there. The drumless sinister-psych drone continues, melodica present again amid the drift, until it suddenly cuts out to residual echo. The only way to end it, really.

“The Voyage of Psyche” is a crucial moment, deepening the multi-hued scope of the album on the whole and boasting a kind of process-as-art mindset that seems at the heart of Mathew’s Hidden Museum itself. And it is fairly called a voyage as well, holding sustained notes of organ at its start with cymbal taps soon joining. The first change is at 40 seconds, and there’s something Kubrickian about it, then guitar kicks in at 1:05 with the organ and a melancholy blues vibe arises but is progressive too in an interplay of different keyboard layers, the organ and other synth working out some argument or other while the guitar recounts the plot; there are vocal ‘oohs’ but no lyrics. It’s loosely Floydian, but really that might just be the VHS grit in the video playing in my head for it. Some possible accordion or keyboard enters ahead of another change around that nailed-down organ line, a swirl-in of drums and a for-a-walk bassline show up, the song riding a groove by the time it’s passed four minutes.

It is a self-jam, which sounds easy enough on paper but requires a mentality limber enough that few actually can pull it off believably, let alone in a situation of self-recording as Bethancourt is here. His voice comes through but isn’t really part of the trip underway so much as an ambient reminder humans exist somewhere else. Fuzz guitar unveils one of the album’s finest instrumental hooks, and bass follows. Drums change then everything changes. The drums turn again, bass takes a solo and guitar makes its way back into that hook and carries it to the finish. Improvisation is at its core, the plot built from that. Songwriting for one, roughly conveyed but intentional in that. “The Voyage of Psyche” ends in its low-end heavy fuzz turns, a last tom hit, and “Echoes Flow” sweeps in to deliver on its titular promise almost immediately.

Contrasting the mostly-instrumental prior song, vocals float no less than guitar at first in “Echoes Flow,” and are more prominent. String-sound keys add flourish, harmonic shimmer, the lights bright, almost blinding but still a dream so there’s no conscious danger. Second verse is a little more forward vocally, a beach or an open field with an impossibly blue sky overhead, but channels swap and Bethancourt inhabits different levels of the mix before seeming to fade into it altogether until everything is one melodic churn and then it’s only been two minutes and you’re out in open space and there’s just a melody playing far away and then nothing. A mini-voyage of psyche, headed in its own direction as is so much of Mathew’s Hidden Museum, with the 33-second “Sinphony” gracefully entering from the silence, distinctly soundtracky with, yes, an orchestral lean, well placed to open side B and cut off in a way that “(Golden) Kiss Divine” won’t be when it picks up the thread of graceful gradualness and scoring some unseen visual at the album’s conclusion.

Elbowing in as only an American via British interpretation might, “Born on the 3rd of July” builds up through garage rock hairiness and feels like something of a return after the two songs before it moved away, Bethancourt speaking to Josiah or maybe the rampant swagger of his final outing with The Kings of Frog Island, but the solos are layered and a lead line comes across drenched in fuzz. It’s there twice, suitably Hendrixian, and all the while the drums still hold the this tension through the first minute. Guitar is freaking out soon before some la-la-la vocals start à la Chris Goss, but the guitar drains out the left channel and a more percussive jam takes hold for a moment, cymbals and hand drumming holding sway before the guitar starts coming back around.

Then suddenly, the verse, and that tension in the drums? Just so happens it’s been funk all along. And there you are, dancing. There’s a chorus but there’s also swirling guitar solos all over it and that’s cool too, you know. A shift at 3:20 brings the next stage as the drums work their way out and soon back with their own in-wormhole swirl across channels. Then the guitar sneaks back and directs all into a grunge twist and push, turning around to the verse, and back again like this has been the song the entire time. The drums move to cymbals, then back, then cymbals and back again and it’s the beginning of “Born on the 3rd of July” coming apart, which it does, like everything, before the wistful ’70s folk rock procession of “Summer Rain (Will Fall)” begins, too barebones in the drum sound to be wholly retro, but not far off.

Some willfully divergent lines of guitar have their say amid some classic-style soloing and a distinctly Beatles-circa-Abbey–Road — I said Get Back when last I posted about the record, but I agree more with myself now, so take that as you will; the difference is the smoothness of tonality — and maybe we’ve been George Harrison all along as another instrumental hook makes its presence felt. It comes around a second time, with piano embellishment, the bassline buried but righteous. There’s a moment at 2:04 where the ride cymbal and piano and guitar seem like they want to wrap it up, but the ‘band’ takes “Summer Rain (Will Fall)” for another quick go before an actual crash and finish. If I was the daring type, I’d dare Bethancourt to put vocals on it.

“All of the Saints Will Sin Again” answers with acoustic strum and a voice nodding toward low-key Kurt Cobain in its seeming move to flesh out what grunge was in the second half of “Born on the 3rd of July,” but keyboard and electric guitar take the song someplace more London than Seattle, shades of Britpsych and what might be slide guitar or pedal steel filling out the repeated line, “If I was a gambling man,” before vocal change around 1:20 in, the melody held strong in an expressive highlight before it all drops out and the acoustic line reestablishes itself complemented by Curtis Mayfield strings and keys working in unison.

A chorus of the earlier vocal highlight sets a backdrop for a return of the vintage tonal tint of “Summer Rain (Will Fall)” in the lead, then it’s back to “Wish I was a gambling man” across channels, with swirls of guitar like radiation waves unfurled from one side of the song to the other, howling, purposefully repetitive. As “All of the Saints Will Sin Again” fades out, other voices join in to finish the line “Wish I was a gambling man” rising on the last word in three-part harmony as had happened at about 50 seconds into the song before a speedier turn of lyrics, but with more voices, as if to underscore the build that’s happened and the intensity beneath the serene but not at all still movement on the track’s surface. It ends, in any case, and all is quiet.

Its first half-minute or so isn’t actually empty, but it is the sound of expectation that’s there in the early going of “(Golden) Kiss Divine,” an as-noted response to the patience in “Sinphony,” broader in its low mixed drones before the fade-in starts in earnest around 30 seconds via a more prominent swell of keys. Sunrise is in organ and the swelling of the day results in exploratory prog, another manifestation of the idea of cinematic music, but more krautrock in its synthy realization, meditative and contemplative like Solaris, thoughtful in its way but maybe written in a more stream-of-conscious primal mindset. At 2:45 the next narrative begins in a minor conflict between drones and keys, a kind of back and forth before diplomacy wins the day, circa 3:20, and those drones and keys seem to around to face forward,.

Soon enough “(Golden) Kiss Divine” is a different kind of aural ethereality, the guitar way in back reminding of “And I Love Her” — that’s right, a second Beatles reference; live with it — while a soft guitar corresponds with “Echoes Flow” earlier, distilling psychedelia to a pastoral essence. That lead guitar over the wash of drone and organ is gorgeous, even as it turns somewhat foreboding after five minutes in, when you can hear fingers slide on strings quickly ahead of the keys swelling again, paradise so momentary en route to more dramatic lines of organ which fade out soon, that memory of soft guitar still part of it, and all is drawn down in the middle but there enough to say goodbye in its actual concluding fade, the resonance in the final movement of Mathew’s Hidden Museum both a payoff for the album and an understated example of the level of composition throughout. It is not a piece that would make sense in many other situations, but here, its flowering can’t help but fit.

That may well be the magic of Mathew’s Hidden Museum‘s Mathew’s Hidden Museum — how much the album makes its own place and what it allows to grow there. The ideas and terrains in which it ventures, united sometimes by not much more than the venturing itself, and the manner in which by the finish it comes to find peace with cohesion, the lack thereof, and its relationship to both. It feels like a deeply personal work, sometimes brave in its intimacy, and perhaps some of its more flippant moments are a bulwark against that on the part of Bethancourt, but the range and complexity manifested in the material isn’t to be understated, missed, or cast as purely self-indulgence from their maker. For what it’s worth, “(Golden) Kiss Divine” lets go more like a chapter ending than the entire novel, and one hopes that, however long it might take to do so, Bethancourt can find a way to continue to the story he’s telling here. It is one worth being told.

Mathew’s Hidden Museum, Mathew’s Hidden Museum (2023)

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When I asked Mathew Bethancourt, frontman of Josiah and spearhead of the solo-project Mathew’s Hidden Museum, what the name of this debut album was, he told me it was self-titled, “Like Led Zeppelin, etc.” Perfect.

As an artist, Bethancourt is not unthoughtful or unconsidered or lacking self-awareness. Mathew’s Hidden Museum is an experimentalist outlet, and the first full-length being announced here is set to release on Feb. 3 through Interstellar Smoke Records. So when he says it’s self-titled, “like Led Zeppelin,” I can’t help but think of all the other self-titled albums out there and why he might choose that specific one for a comparison point. Even over Black Sabbath.

Well, consider how that band flourished after their first record, raw and bluesy as it was. It was the testing ground for nearly everything they’d later become, and perhaps as Bethancourt unfurls the 10 songs and 41 minutes of Mathew’s Hidden Museum, having already done a proof of concept in 2020’s soft-launch Golden Echoes EP (review here), in a similar light. Expansive as it is, the full-length may just be the beginning of a broader exploration.

So be it. As a multi-instrumentalist/vocalist and producer, Bethancourt comfortably inhabits a variety of personae across the span, from the ethereal jab-fuzz of “Naked and Rolled in that Rotten Dirt” (premiering below) to the organ-led-then-bass-led-then-drum-solo-then-the-riff-comes-back seven-minute self-jam “The Voyage of Psyche,” which sounds improvised on top of its drums — a rare feat for a track invariably recorded one layer at a time to feel made up on the spot — dropping hints in “Sinphony” of the post-grunge-and-still-shimmering “All of the Saints Will Sin Again” only before “Summer Rain (Will Fall)” noodles out like a Beatles Get Back jam that Peter Jackson found and the prior “Born on the 3rd of July” lights its fuzz on fire with classic urgency.

The droning and spacious “Echoes Flow” caps side A and the even-more spacious and atmospherically weird keyboard piece “(Golden) Kiss Divine” answers back on side B, so there’s some underlying structure even where it least feels like it, but “The Resurrectionist” at the outset sets up open expectations, if the EP didn’t, and whether it’s the hard, low piano notes before the freakout in “Golden” or the alternate-universe strut in “Naked and Rolled in that Rotten Dirt,” Mathew’s Hidden Museum indeed offer a host of treasures for close examination and study. Or, you can put it on, be like, ‘Oh hey this is some weirdo shit right here’ and just dig on it as it happens. Totally up to you. The album seems cool with it either way.

And if the message of the self-titled is ‘this is where it starts’ rather than a declaration of everything Mathew’s Hidden Museum is as a project, yeah, that tracks. Even in bringing back Josiah with a series of reissues and the new album, We Lay on Cold Stone (review here), earlier this year, Bethancourt almost couldn’t help but progress in his craft while, you know, shredding as one will. Mathew’s Hidden Museum builds on that impulse while reminding of some of the off-kilter blues/garage moments during his time in The Kings of Frog Island in its dug-in, self-made spirit and outright refusal to limit itself to one thing or one style.

I’m gonna hope to have more to come before it’s out in February, but you can dig into “Naked and Rolled in the Rotten Dirt” on the player below, followed by some preliminary album info and a quote from Bethancourt on the track.

Please enjoy:

Interstellar Smoke Records brings forth a musical offering from the open mind of Mathew Bethancourt. The Josiah (and once Kings of Frog Island) frontman looks to the spaces between spaces for creative inspiration, evoking a sense of all things fornicating, all the time. Make of this what you will as you experience Mathew’s Hidden Museum. Limited Edition LP/CD/MC available to pre-order from Interstellar Smoke Records now. Album to be released February 3rd 2023.

“An ode to the season of decay. Naked & Rolled In That Rotten Dirt speaks to my love of Autumn. In all its dying, lay an inherent beauty. Senses filled with the sent of sweet damp rotting flora and the sight of burning leaves setting the sky a flame. Mycelium earth magick guides us across narrow paths, through blackening woods to call at Lady Winters door. The earth, the dirt, enriched by death will summon new life.”
Mathew: 31.10

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This Friday, Dec. 4, UK-based multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Mathew Bethancourt — known for his work in Josiah, Cherry Choke, The Kings of Frog Island‘s first three LPs, etc. — will release the debut EP from a new solo endeavor, Mathew’s Hidden Museum. Comprised of three tracks, Golden Echoes follows behind two singles posted in October (one of which was a remake of The Kings of Frog Island‘s “Satanica”), and while Bethancourt has in the past produced some of the most diggable fuzz ever put to tape — yes, I mean that — Golden Echoes pushes beyond the hairy riffs once proffered by Josiah and even Cherry Choke‘s blend of garage rock and psychedelia to offer a decided turn toward the weird.

Yes, friends. The sometimes-mandated idleness of 2020’s quarantine months has produced any number of offshoot projects from artists, but honestly, as it’s been five years since the last Cherry Choke studio LP, 2015’s stunning Raising the Waters (review here), I’m glad to hear from Bethancourt at all. And Golden Echoes — as the title might hint — is far from another “hey I’ve been stuck in my house for five months so here’s a dungeon synth”-style experience. The bulk of the 16-minute outing takes place in “Golden” and “The Voyage of Psyche,” while closer “Golden (Echoes Flow)))” builds off the opener with a quiet, drifting three and a half minutes, easing into the end of the proceedings. Prior to, the five-minute “Golden” starts with far back drums and piano and vocals, establishing a hook early on. A hint of melodica prefaces the soon-to-dominate-the-mix arrival of that overlaid progression, and when Bethancourt joins with a second layer of vocals, the experimentalist vibe is set and ready to be fleshed out for the remainder of the piece, which is backed by the 7:20 “The Voyage of Psyche”‘s immediately bizarro-Floydian organ.

Less structured overall, and without the solidity of the same kind of prominent drumbeat to keep it grounded — at least initially — “The Voyage of Psyche” is a semi-directed self-jam that unfolds in two, maybe three, stages. The organ holds sway initially until the arrival of harder drums and electric guitar near the midpoint. A solo gives way to a lower-toned, deceptively fuzzy riff, like Bethancourt sneaking into his wheelhouse without telling anyone, but it’s the drums that ultimately dominate, as a relatively simple but locked in groove is backed by quiet bass as the guitar takes a momentary rest before picking up again and carrying to the sudden finish. After that aptly-named journey, the drone-patient beginning of “Golden (Echoes Flow)))” feels suitably like an arrival, with quietly woven guitar figures hinting toward a wash but never becoming quite so overbearing before the already-noted soft let-go at the finish.

The overarching lesson of Golden Echoes is that Mathew’s Hidden Museum is unhindered, unbound by expectation or some imaginary genre limit. The grace in the closer particularly speaks to future explorations that might come, but the same could easily be said of the entire release and the project as a whole. Whatever Bethancourt does with his Hidden Museum, or if he does nothing with it at all from here on out, these songs effectively speak to their moment of creation and set an open foundation upon which subsequent work might build. One doesn’t want to go around making predictions, but Golden Echoes sounds far more like a beginning than an end.

You’ll find the EP streaming below in its entirety, followed by some comment from Bethancourt about its making.

Please enjoy:

Mathew Bethancourt on Golden Echoes:

Like so many, I suddenly found myself with the gift of time. Time to think, reflect, step back and watch the world deconstruct itself. Watching some turn to fear and panic, now aware of the unquenchable thirst created by the sudden lack of rampant consumption in their lives. Whilst I calmly looked on, observed and slowly started to make music.

The enforced social isolation meant I had to do everything myself. My parameters and limitations forced the creative solutions unique to my situation. This music will never happen again. It’s a one off product of a freak moment in time. Born of an experience that will echo across all our lives. All written and performed during the UK lockdown. I hope my observations, of the delicate construct we call society and the people existing within, reflect in the sound. Like – Golden Echoes)))

Tracklisting:
1. Golden
2. The Voyage Of Psyche
3. Golden (Echoes Flow)))

Composed, Performed & Recorded by Mathew’s Hidden Museum somewhere between the months of April & September 2020.

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