Scott Matthew strikes again
Nov 6, 2009 Berlin 3nd July
Posted by
vice
It’s the second solo album by Scott Matthew, and there’s no Shortbus this time around. If the first eponymous work could refer to an audience partly composed by fans of the John Cameron Mitchell movie (in which Scott appeared as a singer with a bunch of songs taken from his first record, including the awesome final track In The End), There Is An Ocean That Divides And With My Longing I Can Charge It With A Voltage Thats So Violent To Cross It Could Mean Death (maybe the longest title ever, except for the Soulwax remix-album…) is a for-fans-only record. A record for all those guys who love songs whispered with a tiny little bit of voice, accompanied by an ukulele and not much more, songs that sometimes get to a jaunty pop feeling but more often tend to a somewhat-typical-Scott Matthew decadent grandeur. And if you’re not much of a Scott Matthew fan, well, I think you should be. There Is An Ocean… is made up of eleven extremely beautiful songs, starting from the contagious La-La-La in Ornament (maybe the poppest song ever made by Scott, with the special guest starring of a trumpeter in the end, too). But it’s the most minimal songs, like the title-track, that show the author as we learned to know him and love him: a soft piano-only carpet along which the “usual” Scott lyrics walk free, with that sort of smile-on-a-tragedy appeal. And so on, for the remaining nine songs (special mention for the hyper-catchy refrain of Wolverine). If you loved Scott as he was in the previous act, in There Is An Ocean… you’ll find an artist that can renew himself while remaining exactly the same, without losing a single shot in terms of writing, performing and vocal intensity. In case you have never heard of Mr.Scott Matthew, or you confuse him with Scott MatthewS, or you just think about him as a dandier version of Antony & the Johnsons, well… I think you have no excuses, really.
