To Conor Oberst

Dear Mr. Oberst,

Please make another Desaparecios album.
The Monsters of Folk is great, and of course we all love Bright Eyes.

But seriously. If you can make something even just half as good as 'Read Music, Speak Spanish', the world would be much better off.

Love,
Joyful Noise

The Tallest Man on Earth 'The Wild Hunt'

I have a few longer posts in the works, but for now I just could not resist talking about this. Singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson, aka, The Tallest Man on Earth, has more buzz then a hive of bees. Corny puns aside, anyone who reads about music on the Internet has no doubt been told that this guy is the closest heir to the folk-king throne and he that plays some of best-written tunes of any modern act playing today.

If you already know that, then you probably also know that these songs are crafted by a introverted Sweedish guy. Yeah. A Swede.

The Bob Dylan comparison is an obvious one, but hasn't every singer-songwriter since Dylan sounded like Dylan, even just a little bit? What separates Matsson from everyone else is that he goes back and hints on the American roots/folk music that inspired artists well before the Greenwhich Village scene in the 1960s started coping them. When Dylan first started, people said he was just ripping off Woody Guthrie, so this latest folk re-interpretation can be seen as just another angle. However, his incredible folk-picking style takes its cues from bluegrass and Delta-blues more then it does from the jangly strum of a Dylan or Neil Young. His voice is deliberately recorded to sound like it was recorded in a tin can in a Mississippi basement in 1920, except the brilliant production takes the 'glo-fi' approach that is so popular today and uses it to take this old-timey feel into another level of the stratosphere.

The new record on the Dead Oceans label, The Wild Hunt, contains nothing more then an acoustic guitar, voice, and maybe a banjo for 9 songs, followed by piano-driven track that contains some of the best grand piano reverb I think I've ever heard on a record. At a brisk 35 minutes, it's a listening experience that comes across as carefully constructed, with songs often preceding the logical feel of the last. Just about every song is a gem, and their sequencing hooks you in by track 2 and never really lets up. Beginning with 'Trouble Be Gone', the album has a pace that is unrivaled by any folk record I think I've ever come across. The haunting 'Drying of the Laws' is followed by the raging 'King of Spain' (no doubt a great set-closer) and followed by the minor intro to the brilliant 'Love Is All'.

Like Nick Drake's Pink Moon or the more recent classic For Emma, Forever Ago from Bon Iver, a single man standing in a room singing and playing the guitar is elevated by the phenomenal execution. Much like those two artists, Kristian Matsson seems like a really out-going guy if you just listen to his songs. His live act contains the kind of energy and raw passion that is captured by the record, but to hear him speak you realize that is a true artist-type. There have been many great introverted poets with a larger-then life stage persona that have graced music, and I think it's safe to say that The Wild Hunt is on par with the best of their work.

The cover of the album contains the perfect image for this music- a long highway, where the destination doesn't seem to be of consequence. The aforementioned piano track 'Kids on the Run' is the perfect closing moment for a record dominated by guitar, and it's opening lyric 'Oh meet me when the morning fails on the field of desire/Oh meet me when I lost my part in the choir in dusk' captures the level of poetry that exists throughout the entire set. It's hard to say if these are songs about running away or running toward something, but the beauty is that it doesn't matter. Just pick a direction and let it take you there.