While you may wonder why a folky Swede deserves to be recognized on a decidedly more twangy website, one listen should do the trick. In that one song you’d probably never know that Tallest Man on Earth wasn’t raised in the mountains of North Carolina. Perhaps that’s because as well as Bob Dylan, Kristian Matsson counts pastoral country legends Bascom Lamar Lunsford (from Western North Carolina) and Roscoe Holcomb (Kentucky) as inspirations. The banjo inspired Appalachian style smacks of a kind of country that is all but forgotten today. It’s the man alone with only his guitar to ride alongside. Matsson has cultivated his rough-edged bluesy growl of a voice in addition. Oh and there’s not a bad track on album either.
With such an eclectic and classicist pedigree, Matsson delivers his sophomore full-length. And he’s grabbed the the sword right out of the stone (or his anointed Guild small body guitar). It seems that he has taken the best of his first record and used that theme to maximize the effectiveness of his songs. Where his debut “Shallow Grave” was bleak, “the Wild Hunt” is excited. The fan favorite “the Gardener” had a relentless chopped guitar rhythm and “You’re Going Back” mines a similar territory with a catchy almost relentless dancing rhythm played out on one guitar.
An immediate standout, the “Drying of the Summer Lawns” relates a two-sided conversation that is so unique that you may think it comes from a non-native speaker. What exactly the “Drying” relates to I’m not quite clear. Perhaps it means just as the summer goes by lawns dry with the heat of the sun. He builds his own mythology with ” Well I’ve said I’ve sailed the frozen corners of the dark Atlantic Sea / And I drifted on the waves and the mirage beneath / And never have I felt such numb and pointless searchin’ true / As when I set my eyes and torched the plans on the mark of you.” Again the lyrics are both puzzling and mythological at the same time. True poetry.
The second track, “Burden of Tomorrow” spends much of its six verses building on the same myth. “Oh but rumor has it that I wasn’t born, / I just walked in one frosty morn. / Into the vision of some vacant mind.” Even with his name, the idea of creating a legend is quite effective here; it comes off just as well as his first album did with despair. His image “Oh once I held a glacier to an open flame,” is certainly one of the most poetic and interesting that I’ve heard in any song or poem. Matsson clearly takes time to craft his words and tunes.
He begins “A Thousand Ways” with “Oh, I have lived for ages I’m a thousand turns of tides / I’m a thousand wakes of springtime and thousand infant cries.” Now if the lyrics were Tallest Man’s only dimension he’d simply be a poet. But more than poetry, Tallest Man somehow merges his mythology with expert picking and a gravelly voice. It really does sound like it’s lived through the legends that he weaves into his songs.
The most shocking and attractive thing about the album is it’s refusal to “sell-out” into a pseudo-band solo artist. Matsson has already done that in Sweden (see Montezuma). He’s danced around on stage and it’s nice to see a singer/songwriter truly focused on his ability to entertain on his terms. What you get on record no different than a live show. Matsson allows his songs to stand as individual works of art. No overdubs, no second guitars, just one person. He’s the solo American Primitive taking Gillian Welch & David Rawlings a step further. You won’t hear a pedal steel here but a man on his instrument. He gets things out of his guitar, his voice and his songs that one performer shouldn’t be able to. It’s that simple.
About the author: Jeff is a teacher in the Boston area. When not buried correcting papers, Jeff can be found plucking various stringed instruments and listening to all types of americana music.