Sneaky Bones returns after three-year hiatus

Sneaky Bones is playing on Thursday night (January 19) at the Common Room in Heretaunga Street, Hastings.

Sneaky Bones will perform his first live shows since 2019, kicking off on Thursday night (January 19) at the Common Room in Heretaunga Street, Hastings.

American Matthew Bean, better known under the musical moniker Sneaky Bones, released Little Words in May of 2020. Songs like Outlaw, Already There, and Switzerland quickly found their way onto radio playlists around the world, including strong support from radio in New Zealand.

The new album continued to build momentum and anticipation for return tours across Europe, New Zealand, and the US.

“Sometime in the summer, I realised it would be years before I would play live again,” Bean said.

“And I was completely okay with that.”

Two years later, the idea of getting back on the road started to feel right. And the first place to start was the last place he left off - New Zealand.

“I wanted to start back up with NZ because that run of shows in 2019 left me with an overwhelming love for touring - the audiences, venues, bands, and people we met across the country were so passionate about music and engaged in what we were about, on and off the stage,” Bean said.

“When I make records, usually the songs have been road-tested and then the arrangements get a blank studio treatment, meaning we try and build a new performance using the studio environment as an instrument.

“But Little Words was born in the studio, where you get a chance to freeze time and use tools and techniques that are impossible to replicate live. It’s been a beautiful challenge to synthesise these songs onto the stage and I’m excited to see them evolve as they travel across the world.”

With a forced three-year touring hiatus and many changes globally, Bean’s musical landscape also drastically changed.

“I spent the fall of 2020 living in a pseudo-artist residency in France and diving deep down the electronic music rabbit hole,” he said.

“A close friend died in late 2019 and left behind a massive and profound body of unfinished work in the form of scrambled Ableton sessions. The pause in 2020 was my gateway into midi, synths, sequencers, drum machines, filter boxes, and other various robots that now occupy every inch of free space in my tiny home studio.”

So although Sneaky Bones was on hiatus, Bean was working more than ever.

“Designing patches and figuring out how to link my entire studio together via midi and CV kept me up at night - my bedtime reading was manuals, it was a little crazy, but it has completely changed the way I think about music, and the way I make music.”