Posts Tagged ‘Walt Whitman’
Kristian Matsson: The Tallest Man in Folk?
I got some flack from a friend the other week when I all but anointed local boy Joe Pug the savior of folk music. His counterargument—aside from my insinuation being broad to the point of inanity—was a Swedish rambler by the name of Kristian Matsson, otherwise known as The Tallest Man on Earth. Matsson opened for John Vanderslice Tuesday night at The Black Cat.
Vanderslice is a talented musician who, with the help of other talented musicians, performed a repertoire rich with rollicking, smartly arranged pop-rock songs. Between songs he kept it light and affable, complimenting a blueberry pie an audience member had baked for the band and asking to check out some guy in the front row’s camera. But there was no upstaging Matsson, whose stage presence combined the quirk of a street mime with the brimstone of a tent revivalist to create something weird and very moving.
Can Joe Pug Save Folk Music?
Social commentary, especially in music, is a tricky act: too blunt, audience rolls its eyes; too fine, audience scratches its head. “Whitman once explained that poetry’s not supposed to confuse people,” Joe Pug–local boy and folk icon-in-waiting–said in an interview last summer. At the same time, musicians that merely trot out talking points or shout buzz words while beating a defenseless instrument may be dismayed to find their art doesn’t last.
Notwithstanding overeager proclamations from the occasional starry-eyed critic, folk has yet to find its next prophet. (Remember when it was supposed to be Conor Oberst?) Last year, the restless Greenbelt native Pug (last name shortened from Pugliese) dropped out of college and promptly yanked the sword out the stone. For a man of 23, Pug struck a remarkable balance between innuendo and clarity in his 2008 debut EP, Nation of Heat. He uses old tools (voice, guitar, harmonica), long verses, and one-line choruses, letting his lyrics stand on their own legs. His delivery is at once cocky and sincere, pressing notes to the roof of his mouth and spilling his melodies over the chord changes. Pug is a student of the old school, and his influences are pretty apparent–although in the interest of avoiding hypocrisy, I’ve promised myself not to use the “D” word until he puts out a proper album.
