The Tallest Man on Earth
The Wild Hunt / Sometimes the Blues is Just a Passing Bird EP
Kristian Matsson, The Tallest Man On Earth, has very little in common with Bob Dylan. He’s too empathetic, for one thing; too unbridled emotionally. His voice scrapes and fights for understanding where Dylan’s collapses in on itself. He’s too tidy, too studied to be young Dylan; too impassioned and awkward to be old Dylan. He sounds like Bob Dylan, sure, but, hey, so does anyone if you listen hard enough. And, upon close inspection, Matsson sounds less like Dylan than like an impression of someone’s description of Dylan—a copy of a copy of a copy. As a songwriter, Bob Dylan’s major tool is obfuscation—he uses tangled language to signify meaning, rather than create it. The Tallest Man On Earth is an active communicator. Dylan selects a theme and peels it, slowly. His songs are crafted from the peels, ripped from the fruit of a central idea. Mattson’s songs, on the other hand, never lose sight of their purpose, and each of his images helps to evoke and create that central idea. His songs are crafted from the core. Dylan looks at his characters from the outside; Mattson looks from the inside. They are both folk dudes with guitars, but they play differently. Bob Dylan’s playing is often languid. He’s got nowhere to go. Kristian Mattson’s is always taut, rhythmic. He’s driving the song toward the end. Dylan’s songs often sound tossed off, freewheeling (ahem), like he couldn’t finish them fast enough. Matsson’s have clearly been labored over, meticulously thought out, and precisely constructed. Dylan is the closest thing to Shakespeare that rock and roll has ever heard; he steamrolls you with endless talent. The Tallest Man On Earth is a very good singer/songwriter; he’s a likable guy that you have to root for, and he doesn’t let you down.
These are important distinctions, if for no other reason than the immediate comparisons to Bob Dylan that The Tallest Man On Earth draws. It’s possible to like one but not the other, or like them both on different grounds. For me, The Tallest Man On Earth cuts deeper emotionally. I think it’s because he wants connection more, and he has to work hard for it. His songs are often pledges, about who he wants to be, or doesn’t want to be—the King of Spain, the sparrow in your kid’s eye, your burden of tomorrow. His voice cracks not because of affectation, but because he strives so hard to communicate. Occasionally, he lights upon an image or phrase so perfect that it feels pulled from the collective unconscious: “Once I held a glacier to an open flame,” for example, or the line that inspired the title of his EP from this year, “Sometimes the blues is just a passing bird”. Kristian Matsson’s 2010 releases—the EP and an album, The Wild Hunt—are both heart-rending and complete in their own right, but they’re also indicative of a body of work as exciting as any songwriter since Sam Beam or Justin Vernon. The only potential drawback here is that, ostensibly, he sounds like Bob Dylan. For Dylan, sounding like Bob Dylan was an impediment because he sounded abrasive and unpleasant. For The Tallest Man On Earth, it makes him sound derivative when he’s not, even remotely. Yet, like Dylan, Mattson’s Americanisms and nasal singing serve as gatekeepers for his songwriting—if you can get past them, the craft beyond is unimpeachable. Mattson’s gift is his need to be heard, coupled with his refusal to call attention to himself. With those attributes in full effect, The Tallest Man on Earth has had a quietly devastating year. “I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone,” Kristian Matsson sings in The Wild Hunt’s first song. Believing him is part of the appeal.
-Marty Brown, 2010
Thank you for charging straight at the Dylan comparison and still writing about TTMOE. Hopefully soon we won't have to mention Dylan every time we talk about Matsson, but until then I like the way you handled it here.
Posted by: Sarah Engelman | 2010.12.18 at 02:04