The Tallest Man on Earth - The Wild Hunt

Album Review by Chris Buckle | 29 Mar 2010
Album title: The Wild Hunt
Artist: The Tallest Man on Earth
Label: Dead Oceans
Release date: 12 April

 

When even your press release foregrounds a similarity to early Bob Dylan, you know there’s no escaping Zimmerman’s substantial shadow. In the case of The Tallest Man on Earth (a.k.a. Swede Kristian Mattson), it seems less an admission of mimicry than a form of damage control: no one wants the dreaded mantle of ‘the new Dylan’ and all the reductive pressure that accompanies its poisoned chalice, so best acknowledge the association and move on. But such avoidance is unnecessary as, remarkably, Mattson’s second album is strong enough to weather the comparison. His passionate voice – all gruff consonants and affected vowels – has a similar roughness, though Dylan was never so robustly tuneful. And the songs themselves are often revelatory: Burden of Tomorrow’s plaintive chorus hooks and holds; King of Spain gallops in formation with Devendra Banhart’s kook-folk; while Love Is All is as heartfelt as its title implies. [Chris Buckle]

 

http://www.myspace.com/thetallestmanonearth