Reviews

Artist:Scott Matthews
Album: New Skin
Label: Shedio
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.scottmatthews.uk

Over the past few years, Wolverhampton-born Matthews has been moving steadily away from the Jeff Buckley-like folk blues with which he first made his mark, taking on more experimental tonal shapes and moods. This aptly titled release takes things even further with an often heavily electronics-based sound, opening with the title track's bubbly rippling synths and spacey washes anchoring the ebb and flow melody over which his distinctive vocals brush like sand in the wind, the overall effect closer perhaps to Laurie Anderson than Buckley as he sings about getting used to our metamorphoses as the track fades into the distance.

Echoey drums and resonant guitar underpin the more earthed sound of 'Wait In The Car', another number rooted in the idea of change and the uncertainty with which we face it ("Do we wait in the car? /Or will fate take us far?/To a place full of stars/Or do we wait in the car?/Forever wondering how/We never made it out of town").

Again steeped in an otherworldly shimmer of keys and guitar, his crooning voice touching his falsetto notes as it soars and recedes through 'My Selfless Moon', a number that touches on fragility, compassion and support in times of need and has an alluring retro yet equally cosmic soundscape that draws thoughts of Richard Hawley. Opening with what might described as sounding like light reflecting off cascading bells with its circling guitar notes, 'Anniversary' is a gorgeously bittersweet romantic song about love, loss and memory ("He raised a glass to hours past/Remembering someone, once a flower/Unsurpassed") heavy with a mix of poignant sadness and ineffable joy as he sings "She is momentary/They are solitary/Yearly he'll meet her there/She whispers profoundly,/"So glad you found me"/April's in the air/With the same old kiss on her head/Dancing alive on their anniversary".

Distant pulsing drums and yet more shimmering keyboard notes embrace the swoon of 'The Tide' a number which literally engages with the ebb and flow of tidal motion in its emotional eddies ("Solitary in the sea marooned/he push and pull is tireless/Child-like it wears me out… Waves become a way/To wash away the pain and doubt"). 'Morning' has a similarly muted soundscape, a slow wearied sway through doubts and reserve ("I am somehow stalling/To make a commitment to you") that draws on weather imagery in rain and clouds, again speaking of trying to deal with pain and trying to get through a new day, "But our saving grace/Is what we reclaimed from embers so tired/A glimpse of a flame still on fire".

Another number with an electronic wash, languid and bruised, 'Autopilot' opens with him singing how "Life can feel so remote" and of "Finding a space in the dark/When you're lonely/Hurting like hell in your heart", ghosts of notes drifting in the background before floating into the spare ringing of resonator guitar, dappled electronic pulses and puttering drum machine of 'Our Time', a number that unfolds like the sky breaking into light after a storm ("It's happening now with you/Our laughter is laced/With infinite smiles for two…We'll reminisce this page/When life's perfect flower bloomed/This time will never be erased/Hold my hand in this perfect place/We frame now on our wall/Where we gave it all").

Again summoning a musical era of decades gone, a stardusted tinge of Hoagy Carmichael, 'Intruders on Earth' wonderfully captures that moment of love when the two of you are the only ones alive and awake in the world "in the open arms of wherever", a mental replay of "a scene where time has no repeat" where there's "No cause for alarm in a world asleep/No mourning for the life we froze". If the song were a movie it would star Bogart and Bergman.

It ends with the slow waltzing electronic scuff and tinkle of 'The Light', images of the light and the sea again here in a song about salvaging a relationship in which "I gave up believing/As I often do/It's just you and me/And our child to feed" as "Our hands become oars/In a lifeboat that once was our bed", digging deeply into autobiographical ground as he mentions his son Elliott and, while "Embraced in a storm/With our hands clasped/And braced for the fight" it and the album ends on an affirmative with "I think I can make out the light/Now I won't stop believing/While your eyes cry for meaning/The clouds are conceding/I love you".

Clearly a very personal journey through whatever the tempest, it may not be his most immediate album, but, mature, exposed and musically sophisticated in its sparseness, catharsis and epiphany, it may possibly be his best.

Mike Davies

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