Listening to The Wild Hunt, the sophomore release from indie-folk artist Kristian Matsson’s solo project The Tallest Man on Earth, is puzzling. Matsson sings with a pleasant, hickory-flavored twang that could make you want to up and move to Alabama. Yet this familiar Southern drawl is coming from the mouth of a Swede.
How does a Scandinavian come to acquire such a distinct Southern accent? The answer isn’t clear, but it must’ve taken a lot of hard work and focus. Maybe that’s why—with the exception of the final track—all thirty-one minutes of The Wild Hunt sound like one song, played over and over. It’s a good song, to be sure, but giving it eight different titles and changing the lyrics doesn’t do much to mask the lack of variety.
The album’s opener, “The Wild Hunt,” does a thoroughly enjoyable job of introducing the sound that listeners will become very familiar with during the subsequent half-hour. The song structure is simple—acoustic guitar and bluesy vocals with a slight swing. It’s happily minimalist, but Matsson’s Bob Dylan-esque voice and tendency to vocally tug at the guitar’s unwavering tempo keep the listener interested.
Unfortunately, that interest fades quickly. The second track, “Burden of Tomorrow,” sounds like a lengthy, oddly-placed bridge of the previous song. The same acoustic instrumentation, coupled with the same vocal styling, remains easy listening at first, but becomes dull background noise in the songs that follow. By the time Matsson gets through a few more tracks, the music’s swaying sounds serve as an effective lullaby for the weary listener. It’s a shame, because the rest of the songs could really hold their own if the album were reordered. “The Drying of the Lawns” shows off a little more of Matsson’s vocal range, with intermittent climbs in pitch and a few strategically-placed falsettos in the middles of lines, but the listener has long since tuned out, and can’t give the song the attention it needs to be appreciated.
The main problem with The Wild Hunt’s repetitive nature, however, isn’t its soporific effect, but rather its strange lyricism. In the first few songs it’s easy to ignore the actual words that Matsson so pleasantly croons to his audience. As the album continues, however, he trips over the English language as a non-native speaker. In “You’re Going Back,” Matsson sweetly muses, “But you dry me to tears/Like I cry from your laughter.” Maybe he’s too deep for us to understand, but more likely it’s a case of Phoenix Disease—plain old, confusing European songwriting.
But for all its flaws, Matsson offers evidence that he might be more than just a one-trick Scandinavian on the album’s final track, “Kids on the Run.” A slower song backed by an echoing piano, the track fits with the others on the album but with a twist. When the song fades to close the album, the listener is wide-awake again, ready for the album’s true third track. Too bad it never comes.
Voice’s Choices: “The Wild Hunt,” “Kids on the Run”
