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| Noripcord |
 Nowadays, there’s an insidious morbidity in how the general public perceives the archetypal folk musician. He’s romanticized as this lonesome, rallied off track troubadour with solemn intentions and a deep search for meaning, perceiving the injustices of an ever-increasing contemporary lifestyle, escorted by the never-ending rough land. He’s the protector to us all; his land is his muse. Yet, for every folkster in the, um, crowded streets of the city, there will always be that true balladeer roaming among us, reciting his everyday struggles with a potency that can’t just be ignored – and we’ll devour every last word.Swedish singer-songwriter Kristen Matsson, known broadly as the Tallest Man on Earth, has a clear perception of Americana. Yet, behind his croaked voice or his occasional conked out English, Matsson’s bucolic ditties seem true to life, as if he really were holding the pony by its flying mane. I imagine how barren the landscapes of Scandinavia must be to produce this sort of inspiration, since most of his imagery doesn’t ring as tawdry or encyclopedic. The Wild Hunt, just like 2007’s Shallow Grave, follows that safe intimate production that could very well sound like vignettes of his relentless approach to going on tour. It still sounds as if he were basking in a recording booth, fingerpicking with utmost delivery as the microphone registers his every last breath. Like a younger Van Morrison, his high pitch occasionally steeps off the adequate frequency, but it’s that same fractured croon that compliments his mostly clamped acoustic resonance....full text |
| Absolutepunk |
| When tasked with reviewing The Tallest Man on Earth’s previous effort, 2008’s Shallow Grave, former AP.net writer Travis Parno said, “...somehow a whimsical man from Sweden has walked silently among nature’s secrets and penned her subtle fancies in a suitably concise album of verdant gems.” Although this is the first time I’ve ever seen the word verdant – context clues tell me it means onion-like – I think Mr. Parno has a point. With The Wild Hunt, Swedish maestro Kristian Matsson once again constructs lively, emotional pieces with nothing more than his strangely authentic Southern drawl and nimble fingers. The lyrics are beyond superb, especially since Matsson’s inner psyche plays a bigger part, and they so gracefully remove us from our urban sprawl alongside melodies as commonplace as the rising sun. It’s a new dose of his old stuff, which was really just a new dose of really old stuff in the first place. So it’s essentially really really old, really really new stuff. Verily! The first strum of opener “The Wild Hunt” is an instant pleasure. Add a banjo accompaniment and, of course, Matsson’s scratchy delivery of lyrics like, “I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone,” and you’ve arrived at the St. Peter’s Gate of folk music. As it should, the lo-fi production allows us to hear every creak and crack. When Matsson strains on “Burden of Tomorrow,” we hear the effort. As the (literal) toe-tapper “The Drying of the Lawns” plays by, we picture the dingy, wooden room it’s inspired by. But perhaps most interesting in its rawness is “King of Spain,” if only because it borders on sounding complicated. This is mostly a testament to Matsson’s fierce guitar skills, but also to the overpowering groove of his voice. His dreams of something more are profound here, too: “Why are you stamping my illusion? / Just cause I stole some eagle’s wings / Because you need me as your lover / Well I thought I could be anything.” It seems improbable, but in this wacky world of indie-is-mainstream maybe Matsson could find his songs in a beer commercial. Or maybe even an iPod commercial!...full text |
| Sputnikmusic |
| I’m not about to say that the comparison isn’t inviting, or even inaccurate, but the off-handedness with which many compare Kristian Matsson to early Bob Dylan is really starting to irk me. Yes, the two are folk mavericks whose material is instrumentally skeletal, and, yes, both have voices that are acidic and abrasive, as well as emotional and humane. Yada yada yada. But while Dylan uses his music as a platform, Matsson’s stuff is much more for himself, being expressive but fragile in how personal these expressions are; almost as if his whole “making music” thing is only therapeutic, and thus only released to the public because it’s just so damn good for it not to be. To further clarify: Matsson’s music is filled with statements like “I’m the light of the middle of every man’s fall” and “I want to be the King of Spain”, but also “love is fake; so I get hurt”, in almost the next breath. Dylan, as damn good as he is, never got that wide-ranging in his early days; he never went for the heartstrings or tried to emphasize with all those messy emotions of the listener – perhaps only because he didn’t give a shit. But Matsson does, or at least his songs are genuine enough for me to think so, and this is why the Dylan-TMOE comparison is thus rendered moot. It’s also why, by God, I might even like Matsson more than Dylan. Matsson makes music that is emphatic and nostalgic and expressive, all of these at once, which is something someone like me needs most of the time, something I can feed on. Like, those emotions and shit, or just something relatable to get me through the night with having to resort to getting totally fucked. It’s all needed. This makes The Wild Hunt kind of like a little revelation, then. Armed with nothing more than some sort of hidden, God-given knowledge of how the human mind actually works, and an acoustic guitar (and a piano holy shit!), Matsson becomes an actual artist right before our eyes on this, his best album. He trumps his incredible debut in every way without resorting to drastic tactics in order to avoid some sophomore slump, instead subtly perfecting his approach to great effect....full text |
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