The Swedish singer/songwriter renounces musical loneliness for the first time.
Comparisons to Bob Dylan have been drawn due to similarities in vocal color and phrasing technique since Kristian Matsson’s debut as Tallest Man On Earth and his 2008 album debut SHALLOW GRAVE. Nevertheless, HENRY ST., the first work that the singer/songwriter recorded in association with a band, should probably not provoke horrified exclamations of “Judas!” like the electrified Robert Zimmerman once did.
Arranged in a reduced manner in the tonal core, lap steel, drums, French horn, keyboard instruments, strings and even saxophone ensure a pleasantly unobtrusively expanded range of tones. Sometimes in the Dylan style as on “Goodbye (Goodbye Lonesome)”, sometimes piano puristically evoking Randy Newman (“Henry Street”) or as on “New Religion” even blaring with Broadway grandeur in the heroic tenor, Matsson actually never sounded so great as on his seventh disc.
And while the previous DIY works of the interim New Yorker, who has meanwhile returned to his native Swedish farm, were primarily recommended as intimate headphone affairs, HENRY ST. the more airy and open stereo speaker stage.