Just a short post tonight, about a little guy with a big voice who goes by the name The Tallest Man on Earth.
I first heard about him via NPR's All Songs Considered podcast, which is where I discover quite a bit of the music I listen to. Joey didn't listen to podcasts - as with NPR itself, he had a hard time concentrating on spoken-word productions, preferring to listen only to music while driving, wandering, etc - so he didn't hear about The Tallest Man on Earth in the same way I did, but he was a big fan. A bigger fan, indeed, than I.
The Tallest Man on Earth is the stage name of Kristian Matsson, a Swedish guy who is not, in fact, very tall at all. He's about my height, 5' 8" or so. This makes his stage name doubly ironic, for not only is he not really the tallest man on earth, he's also probably the shortest guy in all of Sweden (I've been to Sweden - with Joey and Tina, a couple of years ago, for the better part of an afternoon - so I know what I'm talking about). I suspect this is partly why Joey liked him.
When I first heard him I thought he sounded an awful lot like Bob Dylan - too much like Bob Dylan - and his first album, released in 2008, didn't really move me. It's called "Shallow Grave," and I listened to it quite a bit, waiting for the (numerous) lyrics to awaken something in me, but inevitably my mind would drift, and before I knew it the album would be over. It sounded, to me, like a watered-down Dylan without the latter's urgency or ability to paint pretty pictures, and his sound was too jagged and abrasive to make for pleasant background music, so I filed it away and didn't think too much more about it.
On the last road trip we took together, from Nashville to Oklahoma for Christmas last winter, Joey put the CD on, and I tried again. It was clear that this was one of Joey's new favorite discoveries, but it still didn't take me anywhere. I wasn't at all surprised that he liked it, though. It pushed all the right buttons for him: the sound is rustic and folksy, there are lots of lyrics that require close attention (and would repay repeated listens), there's a banjo, and, of course, there's the aforementioned irony (Joey was a great connoisseur of irony). So I figured this would just be something on which we'd agree to disagree.
Matsson's latest album came out in April, and I didn't buy it right away. Joey must have, though, because I remember him posting a video of one of the new songs on Facebook. It's called "The King of Spain," and it is the very definition of a Joey song. He was, of course, planning to go to Spain this past fall to study law, so his post said something to the effect that this song sums up what he'd be doing in a few months. It's a brash, forceful, slightly silly song, and I can easily picture him lip-syncing the bit that goes "I'll disappear in some flamenco" and fluttering his arms in a muted little cha-cha flourish. Here it is:
I remember listening to the song when it came out and thinking that I'd have to revise my attitude toward this guy: he's a lot more charismatic here than in the earlier stuff, and somehow he makes you care more about what's gonna come next. Now, of course, I can hardly listen to it without shedding a tear, but it's a half-happy tear, because the song sounds so much like Joey. The whole album, called "The Wild Hunt", which I bought sometime after July, is either a lot better than the earlier one or simply more emotionally resonant for me now. Or both. I listen to it often, whenever I feel like I can take it, and it makes me feel like I'm with my brother.
When Tina was in Istanbul some months back she sent me a text message saying that she was on the ferry to the Asian side, listening to The Tallest Man on Earth, and thinking about Joe (all of Joey's post-Oklahoma friends know him as Joe). He had planned to go to Istanbul but never did - he had, in fact, borrowed some Istanbul guide books from Kate and me after our own trip there a while back - and so Tina had gone there anyway, because he never got the chance. I got the message and thought: well, yes, there really is no better way to cross to the Asian side of Istanbul than to listen to some music by The Tallest Man on Earth.
No comments:
Post a Comment