Matthew Connor doesn’t just write songs, he creates worlds and sets them to music. The Boston-based artist, an evocative 21st-century crooner whose songwriting acumen has allowed him to dance freely across a genre spectrum that’s definable solely by the audience’s whims and moods, has been relatively quiet since the pandemic hit so many moons ago. On Friday, August 26, Connor is reawakened with a slow burn illuminated by midnight, as he and his unmistakable baritone voice return from the shadows with “Lose This Number,” a stirring new single that pushes his avant-pop into even greater theatrical and cinematic territories.

And that’s by design. “Lose This Number,” complete with its dramatic video of noir voyeurism and retro cool, directed and edited by Connor himself, is the start of a new chapter for the Alabama-born, Boston-weathered musician. Later this fall, Connor will release Disappearances, a grand artistic gesture that aches and yearns in both nature and stature, his first new music since 2020’s “This World” single and first extended release since 2016’s critically-acclaimed Night After Night EP.

With its tremolo guitars and Portishead-styled beat, “Lose This Number” sets a sharp tone for the album ahead, with a sonic lean into country balladry, a jazzy melody/chord structure, and hazy specters of espionage and militarism swirling around an all-too-real sentiment many of us have experienced since we last sat down with Connor’s lived-in storylines.

“‘Lose This Number’ is about losing someone to a cult, in a sense,” Connor says. “It’s about the uneasiness in America these past six years, in particular; that uncanny feeling of looking around and realizing your neighbors, family members, even friends have bought into some seriously unhinged beliefs, have become people you no longer recognize.”

Though the first song written for Disappearances, “Lose This Number” is simply one chapter positioned in the middle of the 10-song album, which follows a running storyline of people who have gone missing under varying circumstances. It’s a haunting turn for a songwriter who has soundtracked our overnight lives; whereas before Connor would often provide an air of uneasy tension about our motives and persuasions, here he has pulled back the curtain to reveal empty spaces where life was once lived, and the feelings of desperation we experience when the answers are not so readily available.

“In some ways I feel like it’s the most direct song on the album,” Connor explains. “I wanted to lean in a bit of a country direction with Disappearances, but not in an especially obvious way. I think each song has a distinct vibe, but that thread of spectral country really ties everything together, along with the analog touch of my co-producer Jeremy Page. Lyrically, every song on Disappearances is a ballad about someone who has disappeared; in the case of this song, both the narrator and the ‘you’ they are singing to have disappeared, in different ways.”