When a musician makes records that are little more than an uncanny voice and a deftly picked guitar, like post-folk troubadour Kristian Matsson, who plays under the name the Tallest Man on Earth, it can be tempting to beef up the arrangements for the touring context.
But if one followed that dismissive line of thinking about contemporary music it wouldn’t leave much else to talk about. Lesser artists than Matsson have withstood more strenuous harrumphing. It’s not the framework of the architecture that matters, it’s the living that goes on inside the house once you’ve got it built. That said, the gently plucked, plaintive "Like the Wheel" or"The Wild Hunt" could have been pulled directly from old Bobby’s songbook.
By comparison the efficiently stripped-down four-piece band S. Carey, lead by Bon Iver drummer Sean Carey, seemed positively robust. With upright bass, heavily effected guitar, keyboards, drums and two gorgeously harmonizing voices, the band blended hypnotic percussion and worrying, elegiac vocals with sparse passages of reverberating drone.
But if one followed that dismissive line of thinking about contemporary music it wouldn’t leave much else to talk about. Lesser artists than Matsson have withstood more strenuous harrumphing. It’s not the framework of the architecture that matters, it’s the living that goes on inside the house once you’ve got it built. That said, the gently plucked, plaintive "Like the Wheel" or"The Wild Hunt" could have been pulled directly from old Bobby’s songbook.
By comparison the efficiently stripped-down four-piece band S. Carey, lead by Bon Iver drummer Sean Carey, seemed positively robust. With upright bass, heavily effected guitar, keyboards, drums and two gorgeously harmonizing voices, the band blended hypnotic percussion and worrying, elegiac vocals with sparse passages of reverberating drone.