Categories : Folk + Roots, Music Reviews.
 |
Rating: 4 / 5 Reviewer: Garth Paulson |
The Wild Hunt, Kristian Mattson’s second album under his Brobdingnagian moniker The Tallest Man on Earth, trades exclusively in your familiarity with its modest offerings. You’ve heard this album dozens of times squeaking through the static on the only radio station you can pick up driving through the plains; bleeding through from another stage at a folk fest; gurgling in the background at an independent coffee shop; flowing from your parents’ turntable—the one you took with you when you moved out—when you were a kid. Even if you’ve never heard a second of the The Wild Hunt you’ve spent a lifetime with it.
Mattson wisely gives you what you want. The album cycles through song after song of delicate acoustic folk. Faint melancholy emanates from Mattson’s gentle finger picking. Raw emotion bleats forth from his pinched, nasal voice. Variation comes from the occasional piano or banjo accompanying his guitar. You wear the album easily, like a favourite sweater with patches on the elbows and fraying trim. The homespun lyrics touch you, making you miss events you never lived, but can vividly recall.
The Wild Hunt sounds like something you pulled from a hidden box stashed in some forgotten summer home attic. The only thing anachronistic about it is that 2010 release date and the lack of dust. You know it and it knows you. The time you spend with it isn’t revelatory—you’ve walked the path enough times to know where the roots stick out of the dirt—but it’s plain and it’s comforting. So you put it on again, which makes you happy and sad all at once.
