Manafonistas

on life, music etc beyond mainstream

2015 12 Mrz

No guilty pleasures

von: Michael Engelbrecht Filed under: Blog | TB | Comments off

Matthew E. White knows how to handle the orchestral palette. Carefully. So deeply  rooted in American traditions, he nevertheless finds all the ways to turn the old-fashioned into something fresh.  A touch of old school disco,  gospel- and soul-tinged textures, he sometimes reaches for the laid-back perfection like the late J.J. Cale, then  moving on into the upper register of his voice like joining the circles of Curtis Mayfield. Hyper-eclectic inventiveness. Looking out, simply said, for the heart, and arriving there. „Love can you feel the breeze“: don´t be afraid of casual words, bitterness will find  its place by itself. Mr. White´s voice is a soft presence throughout. Soft is the killer here. The song  “Tranquility” also faces death, honoring and paying tribute to the late actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. „Musically and lyrically, each track on Fresh Blood feels like a micro-journey in itself; White never lets the listener stay sonically or emotionally in one place. And that sense of perpetual motion will likely sustain Fresh Blood’s longevity, too.“ Well said, Paiste Magazine. My favourite song album  for the spring to come,  along with another mix of the profound and the elemental: Sufjan Stevens´ forthcoming song cycle,  a naked one.  And, yes, the wonderful Sam Lee and his collection of weird, strange and disturbingly beautiful versions of English folk songs, „The Fade In Time“. 

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