After a decade spent fuelling dancefloors and festival fields with HENGE’s cosmic, high‑energy prog, Manchester composer Matthew C. Whitaker has taken a sharp, deliberate breath inward. His new miniature album, Songs for the Weary, is a quiet rebellion against burnout — a record built for those who need to slow the world down long enough to feel human again.

Stream Songs for the Weary HERE

Across eight tender compositions, Whitaker trades rave‑ready propulsion for something far more intimate: classical guitar, warm orchestration, and a kind of melodic gentleness that feels like a hand on the shoulder. It’s a striking contrast to the four albums he helped shape with HENGE, yet it carries the same curiosity and craft — just refracted through a softer lens.

The project first surfaced in October 2025 with “Lucid Dreamer”, a lush, widescreen single that glides between sweeping strings, nostalgic melodic arcs, and subtle electronic shimmer. Its accompanying video — filmed inside Manchester’s Supermassive installation and directed by Antony Barkworth‑Knight — extends the track’s dream logic into a hypnotic visual world.

That cinematic quality runs throughout the album. Opener “Overture” sets the tone with a Mancini‑esque swell of strings over a lo‑fi drum loop, before slipping into “Mind How You Go”, a lullaby voiced through the worry of a mother watching someone she loves head out into the night. “Chestnut Tree” follows with a charming, old‑English jaunt, while “Lucid Dreamer” closes Side A like a lost classic from the crooner era — Andy Williams by way of analogue synth haze.

“Logan Stone” ushers in the second half with a breezy, bossa‑tinged sway, its orchestration once again co‑arranged with longtime collaborator Alan Keary (Shunya). “For the Weary”, featuring Alabaster DePlume, drifts into a kind of cowboy jazz — slow, smoky, and stately.

Whitaker’s humour surfaces in “A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man”, a wry imagining of future creative regrets punctuated by a deliberately absurd saw solo. The finale, “Stand Up to the Man”, is the album’s soft‑spoken rallying cry: a reminder to stay audacious even when anxiety threatens to shrink the world. “Though nothing may change, protest anyway,” Whitaker urges. “Have something to say, though your voice shakes.”

The record’s artwork — an oil portrait by Simon Davis — captures Whitaker as a weary elder, a visual echo of the album’s themes of exhaustion, reflection, and resilience.

If there’s a mission statement here, it’s comfort. Whitaker recommends listening somewhere cosy, a chair, a beanbag, even the bath. Songs for the Weary isn’t an escape from reality so much as a gentle recalibration of it, a reminder that rest can be radical.

Matthew C. Whitaker (HENGE) with Shunya

14/02/26 – Hyde Park Book Club, Leeds

15/02/26 – Golden Lion, Todmorden

17/02/26 – Kazimier Stockroom, Liverpool

18/02/26 – Leith Depot, Edinburgh

19/02/26 – Cobalt Studios, Newcastle

20/02/26 – Cafe No9, Sheffield

02/03/26 – The Grove, Nottingham

03/03/26 – Barrelhouse, Totnes

04/03/26 – Cornish Bank, Falmouth

05/03/26 – The Jam Jar, Bristol

07/03/26 – MOTH Club, London

08/03/26 – Folklore Rooms, Brighton

10/03/26 – Band on the Wall, Manchester

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