The playlist: Americana – Tallest Man on Earth, Will Stratton, Rozi Plain and more
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Version 0 of 1. The Tallest Man on Earth – Sagres Kristian Matsson, the Swedish artist who performs as the Tallest Man on Earth, is both one of my favourite live acts and the subject of my favourite Blogothèque Take Away show (performing an electrifying rendition of Jackson Browne’s These Days). This May he returns with his fourth album, Dark Bird Is Home. It’s an absolutely beautiful record – Matsson’s voice and his guitar playing are simultaneously sad and sublime. Sagres is its first single, and one of the fuller and more upbeat tracks on the record. At times it sounds like an icier, more brittle Springsteen or War on Drugs composition. Certainly it sets Matsson’s new intention: this year, for the first time, he will tour with a full band. These new songs, richer and less lonesome than his previous work, suggest it will be a rousing set. Will Stratton – Gray Lodge Wisdom I included the Weather Station (Tamara Lindeman) in the Americana playlist a few weeks back. This week she makes a slight return, appearing on this stunning duet with New York-based songwriter Will Stratton. It is not a new track (Stratton’s Grey Lodge Wisdom was released last spring), but I’ve featured it on this month’s list in case you missed it. There are some familiar troubadour flavours here, but Stratton transforms his song into something more unexpected and quite magical. It has hints of Nick Drake, but it has more modern instrumentation, and when Lindeman’s voice comes in it brings the most exquisite smoky quality – the perfect match to Stratton’s own tone. Barna Howard – Quite a Feelin’ In 2012, Barna Howard released a beautiful debut album back that revealed a gift for narrative songwriting, and a lovely warm and grainy voice. He recently signed to Loose Music (also home to Sturgill Simpson and Justin Townes Earle), and is set to release a record, Quite a Feelin’, which shows the strides forward his work has made since his debut. These are mature, timeless songs, with strains of Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zandt and John Prine, that could’ve been hauled out of any of the past six decades. Rozi Plain – Actually Friend, the third album from Rozi Plain, will be released on Lost Map (formerly the Fence Collective) in early May, and features contributions from Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor and Fránçois and the Atlas Mountains. This single, a shimmering, twisted folk tune, is the perfect taster: Plain’s silvery voice is counterweighted by a sturdy, thrumming bassline. It’s the type of song that seems to slip through your fingers yet linger in your mind. The Mountain Goats – Heel Turn 2 To my thinking, the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle is one of the finest songwriters in the world (if you don’t already own The Sunset Tree, buy it immediately). Next month, the band will release Beat the Champ, an album ostensibly about professional wrestling – though Darnielle has explained that its 13 songs are “really more about death and difficult-to-navigate interior spaces than wrestling”. This track is its second single (and received its premiere on an episode of Welcome to Night Vale, no less). It showcases Darnielle’s spectacular storytelling (he has also written an excellent novel, Wolf in White Van). It also highlights his particular lyrical style and eye for detail, with the story of one of wrestling’s scripted bad guys and the motivating forces beneath the pantomime villain exterior: “Let all the trash rain down, from way up in the rafters / I’m walking out of here in one piece, don’t care what comes after,” he sings. “I don’t want to die in here.” It’s a song of desperation and defiance, emotions Darnielle always seems to write about. He sings here with relish, and musically seems to move from caricature to sensitive portrait, so a song that began in a hammed-up fury ends with a piano section that holds a kind of balletic majesty. |