The Tallest Man On Earth - A heartthrob sprite
Kristian Matsson forced his way into the American singer-songwriter scene with brazen confidence, sweeping aside any wariness with the theatrical swagger of his piercing, "tough guy with a sensitive heart" gaze. Armed with nothing but his battered guitar, he crossed the Atlantic from his native Sweden without leaving behind its imagery, which stirs beneath the surface of his possessed fingerpicking.
by
Lorenzo Righetto
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Sprites, witches, elves and satyrs: every creature of the forest witnessed the birth, in a dew-drenched water lily, of the latest of the leprechauns. From that tiny cocoon of light Kristian Matsson has come a long way: and yet he was already destined for it, with roots sunk deep in the clear, endless bright spells of Nordic summers and, conversely, in the fleeting, scattered flashes of life in its winters. Destined to revitalize a genre by now weighed down by armies of singer-songwriters trapped in an eternal realm of self-pity and by the stale proclamations of improbable returns to one's roots.
Everything in his music carries a naive, pioneering yet unusually intense and penetrating gaze: his raspy voice tinged with a Southern drawl, the untamed current of his restless fingerpicking, his lucid yet daring metaphorical vision. In Montezuma, the band where he cut his teeth early on, he learned to lean toward the audience, firing off his killer glances, treating them to electrifying performances (which, in a reversal of values, were faithfully reproduced on record in raw, intoxicating one-takes); to style his quiff just so, in order to rise a little above the five-foot-three frame that lets him slip into other people's hearts and plunder them. That's the only way to become "the tallest man on Earth".
"Following the Rain": the Scandinavian storm takes shape
Have you ever seen the far side of a mountain,
swallow the sky,
as you travel through the valley,
as your speedin' still far behind,
through the valley where lovers climb,
where the children will blink and sigh,
they have caught a lightning strike,
in a jar just to watch it die,
in the valley where lovers climb,
Yes, it will follow the rain,
I said oh my friend it will follow the rain.
(da “It Will Follow The Rain”)
As in the seasons of his native land, the divide between the dark depths of relationships that drag on wearily, where the light of a distant passion fades quickly, and the promise of sun-swept peaks is as painful as the stings of the notes plucked by Matsson, aimed straight at us amid downpours of rain and threatening thunder. Throughout his entire career, the dusty noise of an emotional reconstruction with primitive, essential but never stripped-bare contours will indeed remain a defining trademark of the Swedish songwriter's expressiveness.
Essential in giving his songs that crisp breath of clouds building in hazy progression, struck by the reddish rays of a perpetually setting sun that fills your nostrils before you can shield yourself from it. Even when, as on his self-titled debut from 2006, his musical themes are still only sketched out, starting with the melodies.
As already mentioned, his experience with Montezuma doesn't stop Kristian from practicing privately on guitar, following in the footsteps of the great bluesmen of the past. And in the spectral company of Dylan - a comparison already wearily invoked by this very writer, let alone by Matsson himself - whose importance, early in his career, is naturally acknowledged by the Swede himself. And yet it's impossible not to notice that in early Dylan the presence of a band was already a promise hanging in the air, whereas Matsson's guitar skill grants him a more Drake-like independence, that of a songwriter whose expressive potential is already fully realized in his relationship with his own instrument.
The Tallest Man On Earth Ep is, in fact, far from the rough-edged product of a young songwriter with limited means. These are five songs that already contain all the promise of a pure, brazen melodic instinct ("Walk The Line"), a confidence, a personality that already exude a powerful and deceptive theatricality ("Steal Tomorrow") - right up to the closing invitation that reaches out a hand, beckoning into a world of poetic chiaroscuro, terribly realistic and earthy in its liberating visionary quality (“Let’s come all steal/We will lie and cheat/ And turn around/All their limit signs/ And redirect/ This great old boring road/Into the depths/ Of a lion’s mouth/ Just to see/ If there’s something we believe”, from "Into The Stream"). Our man's guitar touch faithfully follows his unrestrained singing, in a work of artisanal sculpture that knows how to carve without wounding, arriving at a Rodin-like portrayal of raw passion ("Over The Hills").
A few tracks on his Myspace were enough for Niclas Stenholm of fellow Swedish label Gravitation to sign him on the spot, releasing The Tallest Man On Earth Ep and already booking him a tour to support it. Thrown in at the deep end, Matsson found himself playing live with just a handful of songs, forced to flesh out his repertoire in short order. Kristian Matsson, though, seems to be one of those songwriters with a powerful, visceral emotional core, always awake and ready to reveal itself, whether on a train packed with commuters or in the solitude of household chores.
That's how, on the back of this intense promotional push and spurred on by Stenholm – no newcomer himself, but someone who knows his job and does it with passion, as we'll see – the Swede's debut Lp came out two years later: Shallow Grave.
The thin layer covering a “shallow grave,” from which to watch the sky, the world
The fleeting shapes of clouds, shifting in size and color, are the guiding light of Matsson's first record. There's so much humanity in the small parable of the title track, dotted with birdsong and that trotting, tickling banjo! The Swede faces nothing but himself and his own attempts, slight defeats and glimpses of distant victories. Rather than folding inward, his spirit opens up, ruffled and bold, unafraid of these first leaps into the void.
He's backed by an increasingly assured songwriting style and shy intrusions of "other" strings, in a set of songs with an immediacy that makes you absorb them instantly, recognizing them at once as kindred spirits. The black, Coen-esque irony of the first hit, “The Gardner”, bears witness to what this is all about: a chase of chords opening and closing, as if swept by updrafts, an instrument pushed to its limits but with a clear sense of purpose, just like the song's protagonist.
Passion and understatement combine here with the ease of an instinctive relationship with the instrument, with an impressionistic composition made of newspaper clippings and the distant calls of forest animals. Shallow Grave is an anthem not to an awakening of conscience – the kind that once stirred the fists of angry youths decades ago – but to the panta rei of a life framed by imperceptible, grass-like motions and marked by the bio-rhythmic allure of a tangible, primitive expressiveness. Matsson's gift – and his good fortune – has in fact been this: the ability to tap into exactly what the horde of compulsive listeners is chasing, sometimes blindly, among the dozens of singer-songwriters parading across the great global stage: nothing more than a few good songs, vividly fleshed out with stories and images. In the Swede's case, it's fair to say that everything arrives before the sounds do, before the construction of his own personal mythology of ill-fated torment.
The songs on Shallow Grave are indeed memorable – and that word is not used lightly here. Hormonal awakenings worthy of the first post-hibernation yawn (“Pistol Dreams”, “Honey Won’t You Let Me In”), fragrant country waltzes, tiptoeing through the breathtaking scent of golden wheat (“This Wind”), are suddenly darkened by the stormy clouds of innocent, Salinger-esque questions (“Where Do My Bluebirds Fly?”).
The mind immediately jumps to the obvious depiction of the fickleness of Nordic weather, but what's truly surprising is Matsson's relationship with words, his ability to forge vivid, tangible images that resonate with rare immediacy. Some point to the slightly irreverent freedom that comes from writing in a language that isn't your own – which would already be an achievement, considering the painfully self-conscious relationship "our" Italian anglophones tend to have with English – yet that explanation seems a bit reductive of Matsson's skill as a "universal translator," whose oblique, naturalistic imagery clearly transcends the language used.
Nobody knew what the raven would do
If he found it was rain in your hands
Like a dog set on wheels you will lope down the street
From the sound of the scratch in his claws.
As the buildings who hide you knew nothing ‘bout time
But an arrow just brushin’ your chin
You said, “Damn be this wind is still movin’ on in
To the bones and the bed of my soul.”
(da “This Wind”)
Perhaps the shrewd Niclas Stenholm had already sensed something, booking a couple of weeks of touring in the United States, which Matsson himself would describe as “pretty bizarre.” Meanwhile, as if in some cinematic "American dream," at one of these shows in a snowbound saloon, amid the deafening hollering of rednecks slouched at the bar, Justin Vernon's booking agent happens to be in the crowd: that night, The Tallest Man On Earth would be added to his roster of artists to send out across stages in all fifty states. In December 2008, Kristian took on no fewer than fifteen dates in a single month, half of them on the East Coast alongside Justin Vernon, plus one date with Marissa Nadler, one with Will Sheff and one with the Two Gallants, winning over both the artists and the audiences, already packed with his own dedicated fans.
Among all these connections, though, the bond between the Swede and the brooding big man from Wisconsin stands out clearly, even if, to characterize Matsson's experience, resorting to mythic reconstructions of winter isolation, both material and spiritual, is probably far less necessary. His "natural" approach dispenses with the affectations and architectures that more celebrated artists often surround themselves with.
The tour supporting Bon Iver would prove to be Matsson's Ellis Island, his gateway into the Olympus of American songwriting, earning him the admiration of the (anti-)stars of that small world, Vernon and Will Sheff among them. The life of a successful artist thus fully swept up Kristian, who found himself writing his second record while traveling through the very lands he'd long dreamed of in his formative music.
The "wild hunt" for a defining statement
I left my heart to the wild hunt a-comin’
I live until the call
And I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone
Yes I’ll be leavin’ in the fall
(da “The Wild Hunt”)
It's hardly worth pointing out how the task of (at the very least) grabbing attention, despite such a stripped-down formula, might have seemed daunting from the outside. Of course, signing with Dead Oceans, a leading label in American songwriting (home to, among others, John Vanderslice), makes Matsson's second record look like a debut on a much larger scale. Shallow Grave – as the recent reissue makes clear – was in fact still a record made in remote parts, pressed in tiny numbers, and The Tallest Man On Earth a name known only to devoted fans.
What's still striking is how his guitar touch - gentle and nimble at once - hasn't lost the vigour of Southern wind and sun, paired with a voice that grows even more powerful and jagged (perhaps even roughened). Rather than flattening out or smoothing over, the recordings on this The Wild Hunt seem, if anything, even more like moments stolen from a life without pauses, split between hotel rooms and desolate cornfields.
It will have become clear, then, that the second album by The Tallest Man On Earth moves within the same coordinates as its predecessor, aware that the added value of this Swede from Dalarna's music lies not in exogenous embellishments or the pursuit of some hypothetical "musical evolution", but in his unmistakable dialogue with his acoustic guitar and his exceptional ability to craft memorable melodies and interplay with just two instruments.
The Wild Hunt also retains the winking charm of a sensitive heartthrob in its love ballads, an explosion of life and youthful swagger, as in the "exotic" and fragrant excursion of the lead single, "King Of Spain". Here Matsson also finds time to playfully nod to his guiding light ("And I wear my boots of Spanish leather"), that Dylan whom, if pressed too far, one would do a disservice to the young Swede by invoking. Mistakenly seen as an almost caricatured rendering of The Tallest Man On Earth's testosterone-fuelled drive, a brash, full-blooded declaration of love - like a bullfighter in the ring - "King Of Spain" is in fact the terrible hallucination of a heart that is indeed transfigured by feeling, yet at the same time exposed to the lover's stiletto blows (witness the exchange: "[...]While we're floating in siestas/ You search for bottles and for knives", which then spills over into the plea "Why are you stabbing my illusion?").
One might be tempted to bet that the opening trio of songs risks exhausting the album's emotional potential, moving through the warm freshness of the opening title track (into which a gentle banjo accompaniment slips in), the rough-hewn gallop of "Burden Of Tomorrow", the caressing, daring arpeggio of "Troubles Will Be Gone"... Instead, The Wild Hunt simply picks up the melodic inspiration of "Shallow Grave", likely amplifying its sunnier, more open-hearted side, as in the palpable warmth of "You're Going Back". There are chills in the intimacy marked out by Matsson's boot keeping time in the clear, crisp ballad "The Drying Of The Lawns", in which the Swede gives a further demonstration of his songwriting abilities (“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”).
We'll spare you, finally, any idle speculation about the originality of this work, about its debt to the farthest bends of the Mississippi, about the difficulty Scandinavian artists face in finding their own distinct identity. So just one more remark: it's in the breath of The Wild Hunt - half melancholy surrender, half (un)conscious vital drive - that the clear brightness of Matsson's homeland can truly be appreciated.
Perhaps that's why the album closes with an anguished piano ballad ("Kids On The Run"), the first instrumental digression, if we can call it that, of the Swede's brief career. In doing so, any fear of a dip in Matsson's inspiration dissolves, as he, not content with that, even allows himself to sketch out new scenarios for what are surely promising years ahead.
The Wild Hunt seals The Tallest Man On Earth's full adoption by the American public. It's time for a solo tour, with every major videoblog clamouring for him as a minor sex symbol of the alternative crowd. So it's time not to let go, to drive the nail firmly into the wall, and thus, together with Dead Oceans, Matsson records an EP in the summer of 2010: Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird. On this release he treats himself to a small, self-aware twist in the form of "The Dreamer", the second track on this EP recorded that summer on the wave of The Wild Hunt's success, which marks the first track he's ever recorded with an electric guitar. At the same time, it's not proof of any need on his part to break out of his isolation and head toward wider horizons: it's nothing more than a small digression (like the piano detour of "Kids On The Run"), an expressive experiment that, truth be told, is sometimes simply needed.
The feeling that his songs are becoming pastiche, reassemblies of earlier pieces, is at times overwhelming, perhaps out of fear that, by leaning too hard on the same stylistic tics, Matsson might lose the spark of inspiration that has guided him so far. Take the opening "Little River", for example: it echoes the intro of The Wild Hunt's title track, a chord progression similar to that of "I Won't Be Found"... Yet the melodious rise and fall of the chorus heals that initial wariness: that reassuring familiarity settles back in, and it feels as though you're just a few feet from the stage, or strolling down an avenue in some American city, with a distant street singer playing in the background. Emblematic in this sense is the already-mentioned "The Dreamer", where the electric guitar becomes a brooding mutter that, as often happens in Matsson's songs, also covers up the accompanying riffs, sometimes only hinted at. The instrument also allows him to build the song differently than usual, with a poppier, Costello-esque chorus.
The real songwriting ace, though, is pulled out in "Like The Wheel", already a crowd favourite having been featured in the latest shows of the American tour. It's in this song that one fully grasps that his emotional charge hasn't lost an ounce of its genuineness, his always personal touch as a writer - directly understandable and at the same time powerfully metaphorical ("Oh I wish I was the sparrow in your kid's eye/Like a fly above is summer all day long/On an island in the heart he has to carry/Past the many you have let into your song"). The EP closes with two admittedly minor tracks (the arpeggio of "Tangled In This Trampled Wheat" is, this time, a clear recycling; more significant than this is the fact that there isn't even an attempt to try something new). The fact remains that, for the plucking that follows the "You're so beautiful now" of "Thrown Right At Me", plenty of songwriters would give their soul. Indeed, with every release Kristian Matsson seems to pull further ahead of his peers chasing in his wake. And the tipping point isn't all that far off.
On There's No Leaving Now (2012) the "tallest man on Earth" finds a subtle and "clever" way to free himself from his one-take recordings without losing the direct, honest character of his music, while at the same time deflating the predictable, pleasant chatter about his so-called "electric turn".
This new, third record from Matsson in fact continues along the path laid out by the previous The Wild Hunt: barely-there accompaniments - flute and keyboard and the faintest cymbal taps in "The Revelation", electric tingles in "1904", slide guitar in "Bright Lanterns" - that take nothing away from the little Swede's inspiration, whose melodic talent remains utterly unscathed on this There's No Leaving Now. If anything, it takes on a subtlety perhaps less perceptible on the more exuberant, scruffier predecessor, bringing back a bit of the "fragrance" of Shallow Grave - compare, for instance, the piano tracks, "Kids On The Run" and this album's title track.
Of course, for those who know a bit about The Tallest Man On Earth's exploits, who have worn out his songs, immersing themselves in them to the point of knowing even their smallest imperfections, predicting where the emotional ups and downs of "There's No Leaving Now" will lead won't take much effort - though that's no reason to hold it against Kristian Matsson.
It's instead the delicacy of this record that will satisfy longtime fans: the sun-drenched scent of the country arpeggio on "Leading Me Now", the Spanish-tinged serenade of "On Every Page", the sparkling bark of "Wind And Walls".
Dark Bird Is Home came out in 2015. On this record, the faint attempt to enrich his arrangements - inevitable after three LPs played essentially as guitar and voice with no real production - doesn't erase the feeling that you've already heard these songs somewhere before, but it does have the merit of giving the Swede's songwriting some breathing room, leaving space for more impressionistic reinterpretations of his music (the title track), and easing the by-now claustrophobic effect of his songs.
This Dark Bird Is Home was thus introduced by the most produced and arranged track of The Tallest Man On Earth's career, "Sagres", whose strongest element is precisely its string theme, which effectively stands in for the song's chorus altogether, while the rest of the track is certainly far removed from the melodic and expressive exuberance typical of Matsson's songs.
A sensual charge that perhaps no longer suits him: if it weren't for his unmistakable voice, "Timothy" would sound closer to the epic Midwest romanticism of “Ghosts Of The Great Highway” than to the menacing “gardener” of “Shallow Grave”, while “Darkness Of Our Home” takes on a Springsteen-esque tinge, with its barely-sketched backing vocals, strong rhythmic drive, piano, sax and a hazy electric solo.
It remains an album that, as always, if taken independently from Matsson's previous career, is still proof of an uncommon talent for melody and songcraft (“Little Nowhere Towns” is his finest piano piece); yet it remains a record interchangeable in form and substance with any other the Swede has released, and hardly preferable to all of them. That's no reason to stop loving it, but it is reason to hope he finds some further motivation beyond mere sonic decoration.
I Love You. It’s A Fever Dream. (2019) is the “usual” album under the name The Tallest Man On Earth, where even the sparse additions of piano, horns and even electronics can no longer pass for anything new.
Even in the songwriting there's nothing particularly new, yet a constantly renewed freshness (mysterious by now) animates the songs on the record, enough to forgive the odd bit of self-plagiarism (“I'll Be A Sky”, “There's A Girl”). Mysterious, too, is a career that Matsson has carried forward with an almost inexplicable consistency, faithful to a formula that still shows no real sign of fatigue, nor any Ed Sheeran-esque decline, even amid the radio-friendly character of some tracks (“The Running Styles Of New York”).
Although it's hard to find a track that adds much to Matsson's now-substantial body of work (even “I'm A Stranger Now” stands out mainly for the Swede's unshakeable, willful delivery), this album too, with its irresistible surges of imagined freedom, is unlikely to disappoint anyone who follows The Tallest Man On Earth.
On Henry St. (2023) he tries, in some way, to escape the trap of repetition already present on the previous I Love You. It’s A Fever Dream, a kind of less lo-fi restaging of the exuberant emotional spirit of his early work.
He does so at times settling for a rather colorless Americana (“Goodbye”), or overindulging in piano monologues (the title track), yet at other times still finding the right balance in the arrangements (“In Your Garden Still”, “Bless You”).
The result is perhaps more appealing on a fairly surface-level, radio-friendly plane (“New Religion”, “Italy”), but it still amounts to a set of thoroughly decent songs, none of which particularly stands out or falls short within The Tallest Man On Earth's catalogue.
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Discography
| The Tallest Man On Earth (Ep, Gravitation, 2006; reissue, Dead Oceans, 2010) | 7 | |
| Shallow Grave (Gravitation, 2008; reissue, Dead Oceans, 2010) | 8 |  |
| The Wild Hunt (Dead Oceans, 2010) | 7.5 | |
| Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird (Ep, Dead Oceans, 2010) | 7 | |
| There's No Leaving Now (Dead Oceans, 2012) | 7 | |
| Dark Bird Is Home (Dead Oceans, 2015) | 7 | |
| I Love You. It's A Fever Dream. (Rivers/Birds, 2019) | 6 | |
| Henry St. (Anti, 2023) | 6 |
MilestoneRecommended by ORReviews
The Tallest Man On Earth
The Wild Hunt
The Tallest Man On Earth
Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird Ep
The Tallest Man On Earth
There’s No Leaving Now
The Tallest Man On Earth
Dark Bird Is Home
The Tallest Man On Earth
I Love You. It’s A Fever Dream.
The Tallest Man On Earth
Henry St.
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Edoardo M. Cappuccio
Edoardo M. Cappuccio
redesign by
Gabriele Brombin
Anna Quaranta
Gabriele Brombin
Anna Quaranta