By Andrew Johnson
With his hips swinging like Elvis and his vocal chords humming like Dylan, it’s easy to fall in love with Kristian Matsson’s music. Matsson, whose solo career started in 2006 under the moniker The Tallest Man on Earth, is a native of Sweden and used to front the band Montezumas.
Through his masterful use of open-tuning and finger-picking, Matsson carries beautiful tales familiar to folk music: about love, mainly, with many images of rolling hills, flowing rivers, and wildlife throughout. Here he is performing “The Gardner” on KEXP:
Being hypnotized by his songwriting is the second stage ( the first is falling in love) that you experience when listening to his albums. It’s hard not to feel an immediate connection to the stories he weaves, even when his thick uses of imagery and metaphors can be difficult to decipher. Trust me, these are metaphors you’ll quickly have stuck repeating in your head.
Visit http://www.thetallestmanonearth.com/ to listen to more of his music, buy his albums, or check on tour dates. You won’t regret it.
Andrew Johnson is an activist and engineer living in Louisville, KY. He loves cooking, bourbon, and baking, in no particular order. You can find him on Twitter and Tumblr, or at his randomly updated foodblog. If you couldn’t tell by his handles, he is a giant, standing 6’10’’ above sea level.
