Matt Elliott
Failing Songs

THE REVIEW

Matt Elliott: "Failing Songs"

I raise my hands and surrender, this is not fair.

When we write about a tremendous artist, the risk of being banal and predictable is very high.

Indeed, since '97, under the name Third Eye Foundation, Matt Elliott has continued to amaze, and with this third solo work transports us into a colorless painting by De Chirico, into a silent movie from the '20s, where melancholy and anguish seem to be the absolute masters, even if his creativity and sweetness, among bird songs and sudden storms, equally fill the heart with serenity.

"Failing Songs" is a magical journey in our Mediterranean, among the sun of Greece, the atmosphere of Slavic countries, and the scents of the Iberian Peninsula, halfway between the sounds of Jeremy Barnes (A Hack And A Hacksaw and Neutral Milk Hotel) and those of Zach Condon (Beirut), but darker, expanded, and especially epic.
The tango of the title track, the overwhelming "Planting Seeds" (ballad for guitar and violin), the orchestral "Desamparado", the intense "Broken Bones", the dark "Lone Gunman Required", the sweetest instrumental "The Ghost Of Maria Callas" (guitar and bird songs), are part of 12 brilliant works, among accordions, string carpets, trumpets, and choirs, where guitar and anti-militarist lyrics are still the common thread.

If the previous "Drinking Songs" left you stunned, this (which is the second part of a trilogy) will make you fall to the ground, but as soon as you get back up, you will notice that the gray and gloomy colors are gone, the dry shrubs have transformed into lush trees, and that parched and dusty land that entered your lungs is now a grassy carpet.

A great singer-songwriter.

Regards, Addison.