Cola Boyy is the performing pseudonym of Matthew Urango, singer, songwriter, producer, and Oxnard native. The first thing you’ll probably notice about Matt is that this dude’s got swag! Sporting an afro, coke-bottle and turtle-shell tinted glasses, and strutting a wardrobe of colorful ’70s era attire- if you met him on the street, you’d be forgiven for mistaking him for a club owner on his way to drop a mad stack off at the bank. If this were 1976 that is. If Matt had been born in the ’50s that is probably how most laypeople would have encountered him, hustling his way through the day, throwing massive parties at night, and probably doing some form of activism in his spare time. That’s not who Matt is today, though. At least not entirely. He, like all Millennials and Gen Z, was born after the economic downturns and political realignments of the ’70s. After which, money became tighter for working people, real wages were frozen, bargaining with your employer became next to impossible, and government assistance for housing and other basic necessities virtually evaporated. Further, and perhaps more insidiously, any notion that there could be any benefit to living in a society other than wringing profit out of people and enjoying the solipsistic salve of consumption was definitively put to rest.
Whatever Matt might have been doing in a previous time and life, I think he’s succeeding in the DIY version of it in today’s post-COVID, late-capitalist race towards armageddon. Starting out in the punk scene in his neighborhood, Matt toured with the surfy garage-punk band Sea Lions for a couple of years before learning to embrace his love of funk and RnB. His debut album Prosthetic Boombox heightens these groovy genre-forms with a glamourous installment of classic disco architecture that is nothing if not authentic to the era from which it is drawn. What’s maybe most surprising about Matt’s conception and construction of this sound, is how undeniably punk it still is. It feels like the demolition derby that took out the demolition derby that was meant to destroy disco. Like a blanket of love smothering a conflagration of hate. Matt takes all the bullets out of the gun and replaces them with gold rings and water lily seeds. This will cause it to jam, but that’s the point. Prosthetic Boombox is all about the jams and vibes, and blunting the edged of those aspects of life that tend to whittle away at one’s soul.
Prosthetic Boombox might have Matt’s performance name on it, but it’s far from a solitary exercise. His magnetic personality has drawn a number of remarkably talented people to his front door, and he has welcomed them into his world with a wide, technicolored embrace. Matt collaborated with the Avalanches on their last LP, and Mick Jones returns the favor by guest producing Prosthetic Boombox opener “Don’t Forget Your Neighborhood,” illuminating its playfully reverent, golden sunlight splashed bop and Family Stone worshiping character. The track contains an important sentiment for Matt, because if you lose your roots, you’ll never be able to grow. Later, MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarten pays Matt back for supporting his band’s last tour with a stint behind the boards for the starlight and synth guided, soft-psyche closer “Kid Born in Space.”
In between, we find Matt bobbing on a glittery beat courtesy of Myd on “Roses,” Air’s Nicolas Godin plants the seeds for a breathy tropical funk paradise on “Song For the Mister” in which Matt swings effortlessly from branch to branch in misty, lilac elegance, while Connan Mockasin adds shades of drama and romance to the longing sweep of “Go The Mile.” Surely, no one is an island, but if they were, Matt’s would be a pretty chill place to hang with some great company.
Through it all though, Prosthetic Boombox is the product of Matt’s vision for himself, and his community. Exemplified by the cover image of himself reclining with a guitar, his prosthetic leg and a gun lie contemplatively in the foreground next to a bonfire with a pair of old bowling shoes as its fuel. Scattered all around are busy, cartoon, disco elves who dance, dive, and discourse with Matt, each other, and the assortment of objects in the room. I think what he is getting at, is that despite our differences and conflicts, we are all one in the safe, and we can all learn to live and party together, if we can receive these differences as both essential and unalienating, as simply the many threads that make of the shared fabric of our shared humanity.
Matt was denied a normal life due to his spina bifida and scoliosis, but through effort, force of will, and the lover of others, as well as himself, he’s overcome the system’s attempts to force these conditions to define him. He is a complex and fully actualized person, containing multitudes and contradictions. And on Prosthetic Boombox, Matt asks nothing less than for you to accept the same about yourself.
You can stream and buy Prosthetic Boombox below via Bandcamp:
Get Prosthetic Boombox on CD and Vinyl here.
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