I have been listening to and writing about Mat’s music for a while now from the skittering acoustica of Moths to the scuzzy blues of Bookclub and finally on to music released under his own name and We Are Lovely Things, an album where it all really started to really come together where you can hear him finding his own sound, his own place in the musical scheme of things. Long Wind takes that honing down of his musical identity even further for never has he sounded more focused, together and singularly of himself.
It is an odd thing to say about a song whose lyrics seem to be at once a stream of consciousness, a confessional and simultaneously struggling with the age old worries of the human condition and a musing about the state of the world. And whilst musically it is set to very basic lines, something he self-deprecatingly references, it is because the lyrics are so engaging that the hypnotic simplicity that it drives on seems more than adequate as a delivery system.
The half-sung, half-spoken directness and conversational nature makes this feel like a chat over a beer, something wonderfully at odds with the modern approach to music where impact is all, big is best and more is more. It sounds like a lost gem from a past alt-folk scene or underground country movement which got lost in time but it also sounds like a wonderful new direction. Forget following fashion, lets just have the honesty.
