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***There are a lot of stories one can tell about John Matthias. He could be painted as a mad scientist, a contemporary composer, a violin prodigy, and so on. But Matthias is interested in talking about other people more than he is about himself. Stories from the Watercooler is a suite of twelve short stories rendered in song form. Their basic template is classic folk-rock-- great songwriting, acoustic and electric guitar, strings. But within this seemingly simple formula, Matthias writes about everything from the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes to fake alternative therapies, credit ratings and telephone banking; from boxing to Japanese internment camps in California and bombs painted with the face of Britney Spears. But beyond this, he also wraps the "classic" sound of the record in several levels of complexity. First, his choice of instrumentation includes harmoniums, banjos, clarinets, and mono synths. Then there are the electronic layers added by his own experimental devices as well as by Coldcut, who produced the album. Last but not least, Matthias's voice is deadpan, up-close, and all the more emotional for the lack of histrionics. This is clever, emotional, unfashionable music-making-- it's not about John Matthias, it's not about the trials and tribulations of celebrity or non-celebrity. It's about the everyday and the unusual, about how people relate or fail to relate. A kind of folk music for a new millennium, it's about life and the world. 30-second MP3 excerpts: Open
Viper's Nest
I Will Disappear
Police Car
Blind Lead The Blind
Stockwell Road
Spinnaker
Stocktaking
King Of A Small Town
Evermore
It's Not
One Sunny Morning In The No-Fly Zone |
