Silas Hite


The Tallest Man on Earth
There’s No Leaving Now
Dead Oceans

There’s something about Kristian Matsson’s voice that’s just plain delicious. On this, his third album, he lets us get long, slow chews off of it to savor; it’s so sweetly sour that it’s almost enjoyable, almost fun, until your tear ducts erupt and your vomit your heart right out of your throat and you realize, yes, he’s killing me softly with his song. Much of the time he sings like a folk truth-teller, something beyond Dylan, almost like Sonny Bono’s voice at its very best with a dash of Lee Hazlewood. He eases into his most important syllables, which he dictates to his muses in the all-important second person: “… it’s not even funny, and there YEEEWWW stand, not even trying.” But he can also get high and delicate, and rather than pull back, he pushes forward into falsetto, like a trained Daniel Johnston. Or he can rattle off a litany of syllables like a prophet. Or he can do it all at once, with great pluckin’ to boot, like on the Indigo Girls-esque “Wind and Walls.” The subject matter changes as often as the lilt in his voice, and while his grand themes are, well, grand, my favorite song is probably “Little Brother”—it comes near the end of the album and starts with almost childlike chiming open chords, only to have that hope dashed in the first few words as you find out about his brother’s drunken insanity. This’ll be great for testing out your new prescription to Wellbutrin.

-D. M. Collins