Matt Elliott
The Calm Before

Matt Elliott, the calm that looms before the storm that will crash down on the album cover just released? Matt Elliott, former Third Eye Foundation, the singer-songwriter from Bristol who unleashes a semi-masterpiece of emotional crescendos. Matt Elliott, the English musician who instead of drinking beer, downs pints of acacia honey.

"The Calm Before" shines with a clear crystalline beauty, it is as pure as the air washed by a tropical downpour. It's an orderly interweaving of arpeggiated guitars and light piano touches that support Matt's deep and sweet voice reminiscent of Leonard Cohen (listen to believe "The Feast Of St. Stephen" and "I Only Wanted To Give You Everything"). In the long title track "The Calm Before" the atmosphere is charged with tension, in the Spanish-flavored "Wings & Crown" it is even electrified, the strings overlap, emotions and memories accumulate, the wind propels the notes into cacophonous swirls worthy of the best Damien Rice, in flashes of similar noise-post-rock that dissipate in a few moments.

"The Calm Before" is a minimal disturbance that remains dark and fixed on the horizon. The wind blows but it's not frightening, lightning strikes the black sky but the dangerous ones are those "inside" that tear through ingrained memories, perhaps painful ones.

"The Calm Before" nears musical perfection and grace, tickles sensitive souls, offers forty minutes of sorrowful apparent calm before "something or someone" unleashes within our soul. It will be the psychological weather report that predicts the downpours that will pour inside us, whether it will be just a spring drizzle or a summer storm...

I...literally got soaked (and imagine the enjoyment...and the yearning).