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Dec 12, 2024 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Bret Woodard

Portland, Maine-based indie folk singer/songwriter and filmmaker Matt Cascella is set to return tomorrow with his new album, Pretty Darn Pretty, his latest release under the moniker Schmoon. Cascella first got his start in the New York indie scene, releasing a handful of albums as part of the piano pop project Brooms and while recording solo material under the name Owlbiter. Cascella relocated to Portland during the pandemic and later began revisiting old material, working with producer, engineer, and mixer Brendon Thomas to create Prety Darn Pretty.

Cascella has already shared the album’s title track and last month’s subsequent single, “Bowlegged Rider.” Today ahead of the album’s release he is sharing an early listen to one of its highlights, “Danny Friend,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Danny Friend” occupies a different space than the record’s spacious and washed-out early singles. Instead, the track chugs forward in a tightly wound simmer, tinged by scratchy percussion, wiry banjo licks, and distorted basslines. The track steadily builds as Cascella’s vocals meld into the smokey instrumental haze, growing more and more intense as Cascella and Thomas toss swirls of discordant tones and clattering percussion into the mix. It ascends to a visceral point of untamed chaos before quickly cutting out, jumping into field-recorded audio of Cascella singing in the shower.

Lyrically, the track fantasizes about living off the grid, told from the point of view of someone trying to lure the titular Danny to come away with him. “I know you’re insecure / Well so am I / We’d make a fine team meek and lean / You’re all I’ve got / Well there’s the radio plus the cot.”

Cascella says of the track, “I was inspired by John Steinbeck, who has written a lot about this world, notably Cannery Row, which I love. Some of the characters are outcasts, misaligned with society, which I relate to and hope the characters in ‘Danny Friend’ communicate that. But I certainly hope it doesn’t sound callous to the folks who truly live off the grid, either by choice or circumstance. That’s a reality I haven’t lived. The song is really about a toxic friendship and trying to lure your friend into a way of being.

The tune sounds like a locomotive with the drums fixed in a steady pattern and occasional mouth percussion. The heavy bass adds to that determined chugging, somewhere between folk and punk. By the end of the tune, the locomotive loses control.

Brendon [Thomas] is imperative to the sound of this record. He plays a lot of the instruments you hear. He got me out of my head with how I envisioned certain songs, allowing us to find the feel and sound together. His banjo playing on ‘Danny Friend’ is one of my favorite parts. It’s conversing, almost like the two characters in the song. It’s a bit angular, maybe evoking a disagreement. It just fits the tone of the world really well. I love it!

A favorite lyric is: ‘We can live on canned beans / Fart through our dreams / Fish in the creek / One pair of jeans / That’s all I need.’ To me, this passage reflects a very simple, unfussy lifestyle. The notion of bypassing your aspirations to fart through your dreams (or ambitions) is appealing to me. I think a lot of us out there have chosen a more conventional path, maybe out of priorities or fear or a sense of belonging. Maybe we fantasize about ditching it all, living off very little. The narrator might be making some decent points, but he’s also an untrustworthy dirtbag.”

Check out the song and video, directed by Wes Sterrs, below. Pretty Darn Pretty is out everywhere tomorrow, December 13th.