Review: The Tallest Man On Earth – The Wild Hunt

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In his second full length album, The Wild Hunt, Kristian Matsson (A.K.A.) The Tallest Man on Earth, sticks to the sparse instrumentation and alternatively detached and affected vocals of his debut, Shallow Grave. Oscillating between calm, restrained singing and swells of emotive howling seems to have become a staple of folk singer/songwriters like Matsson. Conor Oberst (Bright eyes) is known specifically for this kind of performance, but while Oberst often accompanies his vocal outbursts with indulgent, instrumental flourishes, Matsson doesn’t need keening strings, blaring synths, or pummeling drums to augment his most chillingly powerful deliveries.
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There are a couple of reasons to respect Matsson’s decision to stick to his spare, sonic arsenal of acoustic guitar, piano, banjo, and the nasal, rasp of his own voice. Matsson is impressively capable of wrangling fresh sounds from his guitar on each track, whether it’s the jangling strum of opening track “The Wild Hunt” or the catchy finger-picking of “Troubles Will Be Gone”. Though many of the songs begin with the solitary sound of Matsson’s guitar, once his voice comes on, the two sounds become nearly inextricable. Matsson bends strings and strums hard or softer to reflect his own vocal temperament.

As adept and effective as Matsson’s guitar playing is, it never overtakes his undeniably Dylanesque voice (Yes, that’s right). As aware as Matsson is of the tension between voice and guitar, he is also keenly perceptive of himself as a musician at the forefront of a great American folk singer/songwriter tradition. Appropriately, Matsson references his predecessors from Robert Johnson (“…and when the blues fall down like hail” from “The Wild Hunt”) to Bob Dylan (“I Put on my boots of Spanish leather” from “The King of Spain”).These allusions aren’t just shout-outs or paid respects to the greats of Matsson’s musical heritage, they suggest a humbleness  that’s hard to come by with so many artists trying to cross-over, rehash, and reinvent the sounds of the past.

Matsson’s perception of himself in relation to the greats parallels the lyrical content of the album. The songs on The Wild Hunt abound with hopeful aspirations for greatness as well as painful realizations of smallness. On “The King of Spain”, Matsson sings, “I am not from Barcelona/ I am not even from Madrid/ I am a native of the North Pole/ and that could mess up any kid/ well, If you reinvent my name / well, if you can redirect my day/ I wanna be the king of Spain”.

The song raises the question, “What is a Swedish dude like Matsson doing in the shoes of the great American singer/songwriters?” But this is an irrelevant question. Despite Matsson’s stage moniker, The Tallest Man on Earth,  it doesn’t seem that Matsson regards himself as the latest, greatest singer/songwriter. As Matsson sorrowfully sings on the opening track, “I plan to be forgotten when I’m gone / Yes, I’ll be leaving in the fall”. Matsson is earnest and unassuming, but undeniably a spectacular musician and The Wild Hunt is one of the best folk albums of the past decade.

-Andrei Hirschhorn