New album, lifestyle for Matthew Dear

Matthew Dear, who has been touring the world for more than 15 years, never thought he’d have to worry about securing his Ann Arbor, Mich., home studio while he’s gone. But when the avant-pop producer, DJ and singer started coming home to find his equipment had been tampered with, a new reality set in.

“I’ll come in and find my vintage recording consoles with all the buttons pushed in and the faders turned up,” Dear says.

Then, with a chuckle, he concedes, “we have a jovial family … a 5½-year-old daughter, a 3½-year-old daughter and a 7-month-old boy. At least they don’t know how to turn them on yet.”

Yes, life is looking a bit different now for the 39-yearold artist than it did when he released his debut album in 2003 on the Ghostly International label that he co-founded. He’s established himself as the label’s alpha artist of sorts, straddling from his eponymous instrumental technopop project to other DJ aliases that gear toward minimal electronica and more traditional dance music.

Now with the release of his sixth album, “Bunny,” Dear has presented his most accessible project to date. Two notable tracks even feature vocals from Canadian pop duo Tegan and Sara complementing the fully formed richness of Dear’s hallmark baritone, which is front and center Matthew Dear (“Bunny” Live): 9 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8. $15-$17. Public Works SF, 161 Erie St., S.F. publicsf.com

throughout the release. Local fans can hear it for themselves when Dear performs “Bunny” live at Public Works in San Francisco on Thursday, Nov. 8.

In the early aughts, Dear stuck around San Francisco on a tour stop and filmed a promo video at a local barbershop. But as he’s grown from that dark and edgy yet anxious 20-something to now a confident, courtly auteur and family man, his tour schedule has changed.

“Back in the day, I may have taken later flights to get home from Europe, or stayed two weekends in a row and sort of bridged the emptiness with a few extra days in a hotel,” Dear says. “Definitely, with my kids now, I want to get home as soon as possible. So if I go to Japan for a weekend, I’ll fly out on a Friday and be flying home on Sunday.”

Thematically, Dear’s albums have reflected his personal growth in linear fashion — much as the National’s adult rock music has with singer Matt Berninger’s trajectory. And while tracks on “Bunny” like the sinister lyricism and post-industrial temperament of “Modafinil Blues” could easily slide into Dear’s canon, it’s odes to his children like “Before I Go” (a collaboration with techno stalwart Ricardo Villalobos) and the love letter to his wife “Horses” (with Tegan and Sara) that show his palpable growth as a songwriter.

Inspired by a painting of horses that Dear and his wife often walked past, “Horses” marries the familiarity of Tegan and Sara’s vocals with what Dear refers to as the “combination of groove, weirdness, rhythm, vibe and energy” that have kept him passionately drawn to dance music. There’s a sense of escapism within the song that the trio arrive at together, and Dear, a career DJ, admits that he wasn’t always able to collaborate so fluidly.

“I was definitely intentionally insular at a point in life where maybe I didn’t feel confident enough to work with other people. Like I didn’t think I deserved to, or that they wouldn’t want to work with me. So I never really acted upon it,” he says. “But the older you get — at least for me — it’s just this ‘no mistakes’ philosophy. There’s nothing you can do that’s wrong. … You just try everything.”

While the twin sister duo of Tegan and Sara are an obvious force on the hook of “Horses” and “Bad Ones,” Dear is still undoubtedly the standout. Mechanical and sly, there are few voices in electronic music that have become as recognizable as Dear’s over the years. It has aged beautifully, even despite Dear never taking voice lessons — at least not in the traditional sense.

“It’s funny, cause you just sing so much when you have a kid; if they’re crying in a car seat, putting them to bed. It’s always different lullabies or ‘Down by the Bay,’ ” he muses. “They really like that melody.

“In that sense my singing has gotten way more refined and tighter ‘cause I’ve been working with these songs and finding different ways of singing them, in different keys or putting my own delay and echo for ‘Down by the Bay.’ So I guess I pretty much have been giving myself vocal lessons. If you have kids, be their singer.”

Adrian Spinelli is a Bay Area freelance writer.

Chad Kamenshine Matthew Dear has just released “Bunny,” his most accessible record to date. On the song “Horses,” a love letter to his wife, twin sister duo Tegan and Sara sing the hook.