Dent May Kicks Off Summer Tour with Shannon Lay This Month

Dent May is taking his latest album Across The Multiverse on the road again. His summer North American tour kicks off with a show on June 28 in San Francisco with Michael Rault and will continue on across the continent and back over the next month with support from fellow Los Angeles songwriter Shannon Lay.

6/28: Brick and Mortar - San Francisco, CA ^

6/29: Holland Project - Reno, NV *

6/30: Bunkhouse Saloon - Las Vegas, NV *

7/01: Rebel Lounge - Phoenix, AZ *

7/02: Sister Bar - Albuquerque, NM *

7/04: Transit Bicycle Company - Dallas, TX *

7/05: Mohawk - Austin, TX *

7/06: Gasa Gasa - New Orleans, LA *

7/07: Proud Larry's - Oxford, MS *

7/08: Hi-Tone Cafe - Memphis, TN *

7/09: The Earl - Atlanta, GA *

7/10: Mothlight - Asheville, NC *

7/11: Jammin Java - Washington, DC *

7/13: Market Hotel - Brooklyn, NY *

7/15: La Vitrola - Montreal, QC *

7/16: Horseshoe Tavern - Toronto, ON *

7/17: PJ's Lager House - Detroit, MI *

7/18: Empty Bottle - Chicago, IL *

7/19: Mortimers - Minneapolis, MN*

7/20: Slowdown - Omaha, NE *

7/21: Lost Lake - Denver, CO *

7/23: Monarch - El Paso, TX *

7/24: Club Congress - Tucson, AZ *

7/25: Soda Bar - San Diego, CA *

8/01: Highland Park Ebell Club - Los Angeles, CA

^w/ Michael Rault

* w/ Shannon Lay

WATCH:

"ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE" | "PICTURE ON A SCREEN" |

"90210"

PRAISE FOR ACROSS THE MULTIVERSE:

"The young Southern troubadour writes singalong songs filled with wit and earnestness. Think Boston renegade Jonathan Richman or songwriter-actor Loudon Wainwright III. Woven through: a dynamic arrangement that suggests his Pasadena neighbor Van Dyke Parks' work both solo and with the Beach Boys." - LA Times

"Buoyed by round synth tones, disco flourishes, and an abiding love for the Beach Boys, the album finds the Mississippi-raised Dent breezing through the same mythic Los Angeles vibe Harry Nilsson, Carole King, and Van Dyke Parks tapped into. Wistful, funny, and warm, it's a thick, deeply pleasurable chunk of melodic magic." - Aquarium Drunkard

"Absolutely dazzling." - Stereogum

"Dent May translates his first impressions of the sometimes superficial and always tragically beautiful Los Angeles into Brian Wilson-like pop ballads." - Bandcamp

"He's a little bit country. He's a little bit rock and roll. He's also a little bit disco, a little bit electro, and a lot throwback. On his fourth album, Across the Multiverse, all of that combines to beautifully address the paranoia and discomfort of the present and love in the time of technology." - Flood

"Dent May has crafted bright, homemade pop songs that pull from the past-disco, soft-rock, country-western, psychedelia, soul, funk-all with light-hearted wit and his distinct croon." - Hype Machine

MORE ON DENT MAY:

"Don't wanna move to Southern California / I wasn't really meant for LA..." So sang Dent May once upon a time, now he's eating those words with a side of avocado toast in his new Los Angeles bungalow. What made the lifelong Mississippi boy pull up stakes and head west? "No one looks at you funny if you wear a tuxedo to the supermarket." What he means is he moved there to shake up his surroundings, clear his head, and write the most accomplished record of his young career, the magical mystery tour de force Across the Multiverse.

Following the lead of musical-polymaths-with-LA-ties before him like Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks, and Harry Nilsson, Dent's style on Across the Multiverse will be familiar to fans of his previous work. Yet there's something more refined about this collection... Stately strings mingle with boogie piano like old friends. Synths weave a celestial backdrop throughout. Every verse, bridge and chorus in its right place, giving it the unmistakable feel of a true songwriting craftsman at work. Lyrically Dent has never been sharper, musing on themes like modern romance ("Picture on a Screen", "Face Down in the Gutter of Your Love"), existential dread ("Dream 4 Me", "I'm Gonna Live Forever Until I'm Dead"), and the distance to the moon ("Distance to the Moon") as he searches for meaning among the infinite scrolling feeds of our 21st century augmented reality. The title track, a duet with Frankie Cosmos, is a deep space love song about finding love beyond impossible boundaries.

Across the Multiverse was written and recorded in a sunny bedroom in LA's Highland Park neighborhood, with Dent producing and playing nearly every instrument himself. The tracks were selected from dozens of songs written after the LA move, a gold rush of productivity inspired by late nights DJing rare disco funk cuts at local watering holes. It's his first album for Carpark Records and is out now.

Photo credit: Carson Culver

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