•
Rating: ....obsessions never sleep,
you wake with it caressing your cheek.
Just how can you ignore the one thing you die for?
Have you ever found yourself sitting by candlelight? Perhaps alone, wrapped in a blanket, while it's raining outside and melancholy overwhelms you? Unfortunately, I have never experienced this, although every time I listen to "What the Night Delivers...", the feelings seem the same. But what does the night bring us? Perhaps the tranquility of sleep? It brings us darkness, silence, calm, ourselves. But do our obsessions go to sleep or do they stay beside us, lying on the bed, watching over us for some unknown reason?
Scott Matthews, after "Passing Stranger" in 2006 and "Elsewhere" in 2009, reaches the third chapter of his career, a small folk masterpiece in precarious balance between the musical poetry of Nick Drake and a voice, at times, eerily similar to that of Jeff Buckley.
35 years old from Wolverhampton (UK), Scott tells us, through enveloping and captivating harmonic loops, about his nocturnal "self," his obsessions. The night is the protagonist, accompanied by the double bass and a densely woven sound fabric made of sitar and cello. His acoustic guitar shapes perfect circles, suspended on the percussion, never intrusive, entrusted to Glen Martin.
A homogeneous work, placidly melancholic, rich in nocturnal chiaroscuro nuances, the ten tracks of the album offer us a musical world straddling the '60s and '70s, an acoustic, chamber-like folk, I dare say, outside today's norms.
Trust me, it will be love at first listen. Some will fall in love with the voice, others with the dreamy atmosphere. Those poor in spirit, the lovers of guitar riffs and deafening drums, those who never seek "themselves" in music will be disappointed.
Loading comments slowly
