Into The Music
Casey Crescenzo has been building the same story for a long time, and most people still haven’t noticed. That is, simultaneously, one of the most frustrating things about the music industry and the best argument for why The Dear Hunter deserves the attention it has never quite received at scale.
Crescenzo started The Dear Hunter in Providence, Rhode Island in 2006, building a concept album series called the Act Albums, a narrative cycle that spanned six records across fifteen years, plus bonus material, orchestral arrangements, and a series of companion EPs called The Color Spectrum that each explored a different musical universe. It was an absurdly ambitious undertaking, and he completed it. Not many artists pull that off.
The band, which has cycled through various configurations while remaining centered on Crescenzo’s songwriting and multi-instrumental playing, draws from progressive rock, post-hardcore, art rock, jazz, chamber music, and whatever else the song requires. The result is dense, expressive music that refuses to commit to any single genre identity. That flexibility is a genuine strength, even if it makes The Dear Hunter harder to market than a band with a cleaner sound.
After completing the Act series, Crescenzo launched a new narrative called the Indigo Child, beginning with 2022’s Antimai. This month, the new album Sunya, out March 20 via Cave and Canary Goods, continues that story. The title translates to “nothing,” and the album uses a dystopian setting to explore doubt, scarcity, and the process of searching itself. It is, by most accounts, the most sonically diverse record Crescenzo has made: big band arrangements, funk grooves, prog suites, and vocal performances that stretch across registers he has been refining for two decades.
The centerpiece is “The Glass Desert,” a three-part suite that sits at the heart of the album and demonstrates exactly what Crescenzo does that few other artists attempt. He builds structures that take time to reveal themselves, that require you to sit with the music long enough to understand what it’s doing. That patience is not fashionable right now. The Dear Hunter makes it worthwhile.
Crescenzo is touring behind Sunya this spring, and if you’ve been sleeping on The Dear Hunter, this is the right time to catch up. Start with the Act Albums. Then go forward. There’s more here than most artists manage in a career.
The Dear Hunter are from Providence, Rhode Island. They have been active since 2005. Their music defies easy categorization, and that’s the whole point.