Tallest Man On Earth - Shallow Grave [2008) {FLAC/320]

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The Tallest Man On Earth - Shallow Grave
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Artist.................: The Tallest Man On Earth
Album................: Shallow Grave
Genre................: Folk
Source...............: CD
Year..................: 2008
Ripper................: NMR

(FLAC)
Codec.................: Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
Version................: FLAC 1.2.1 20070917
Quality................: Lossless, (avg. bitrate: 769kb/s)
Channels.............: Stereo / 44100 HZ / 16 Bit
Tags...................: VorbisComment
Included..............: Audiochecker, M3U
Covers................: Front



(MP3)
Codec................: LAME 3.98
Version...............: MPEG 1 Layer III
Quality...............: Insane, (avg. bitrate: 320kbps)
Channels............: Joint Stereo / 44100 hz / 16 Bit
Tags..................: .ID3 v2.3
Included.............: M3U
Covers...............: Front

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The debut by the Tallest Man on Earth (alias Kristian Mattson, a youthful
Swede of average height) is one of those albums that is truly difficult to
convince yourself was actually made when it was made, and isn't a dusty
artifact of a bygone era. The obvious point of reference is early Dylan at his
most earnestly folky -- a no-brainer, especially given Mattson's richly gritty,
slightly pinched voice and densely imagistic lyrics -- but Shallow Grave also
hearkens back further to the rural sources of Dylan's inspiration, evoking the
spirits of pre-war hillbilly folkers and Mississippi country bluesmen, and often
more vividly than Dylan himself. The unvarnished but essentially clean
recording quality aside, there's little to suggest that these tunes weren't
recorded in the American South in the early part of the last century, on the
porch of some particularly contemplative backwoods poet. Crucially though, it
never feels as though Mattson is playing a character, even if in some sense
he clearly is: the hard-won wisdom, sly humor, and deep-seated romance
that infuse the Tallest Man's songs drip from Mattson's craggy larynx just as
artlessly and effortlessly as his fiery, deftly picked guitar and banjo parts
flow from his fingers. Interestingly, the duplicitous nature of persona -- and
the startling lengths to which we'll go to maintain it -- forms the central thread
of the album's most hauntingly resonant song, the tender yet unsettling "The
Gardener," whose narrator confesses a string of murders (allegorical or
actual) he's committed to preserve his image as "the tallest man" in the eyes
of his loved one. Elsewhere, it can be a tall order to unravel the album's
fractured narratives or make sense of its pastoral-phantasmagorical imagery
(from "Pistol Dreams": "I will boil the curtains to extract the drugs of
springtime/But that unicorn, he stirs up as a mule"), but it's hard to mistake
the world-weary sentiment at the core of "I Won't Be Found" or the longing
underlying the undeniably Dylan-esque "Honey Won't You Let Me In." A key
point of disambiguation: while it may be a similarly scratchy acquired taste for
some, and it's not exactly easy on the ears, Mattson's voice is a much finer
vessel for melody than Dylan's ever was, and he imbues these songs with
some excellent ones, immediately hummable tunes that only deepen their
appeal with repeated listens. An immensely impressive and likable debut.

Bob Dylan didn't appear out of thin air, but it sure sounded like it at the time.
Just go back and listen to one of his earliest, pre-electric recordings, like The
Freewheelin' Bob Dylan or Another Side of Bob Dylan; his profound admiration
... Full Descriptionof Woody Guthrie may be the stuff of legend by now, but
his talent on those early records is so effortless, so timeless, it seems as
though Dylan emerged a fully-formed talent, owing no particular debt to
music history, simply writing it as he went along.

It's that quality that has always seemed to elude the countless New Dylans
that have been popping up for the last four decades, and it's that quality
that seems to have magically struck again with Kristian Matsson, a normal-
sized guy who records under the name The Tallest Man on Earth and might
just be the first New Dylan to really capture the spirit of what made the Old
Dylan great from Day One. He knows the secret of how to be a good Dylan
impersonator: Don't impersonate Dylan. On his debut full-length, Shallow
Graves, Matsson doesn't sound like he's aping Dylan, or anybody else for
that matter. His music sounds effortless and unforced, untouched by time
and wrapped in mystery. He's not playing these songs because he wants to
be the next Bob Dylan; he's playing them because it's what he was born to
do, and it's hard to shake the feeling that nobody else but him could ever
play these particular songs.

His is such a natural songwriting talent that his words and melodies seem to
exist in a vacuum; his craggy, nasally voice might sound like a rougher,
tougher Mr. Zimmerman, and his loose, limber acoustic guitar and banjo
strumming doubtless has some vague touchstones in country, blues, gospel,
and folk, but, when Matsson's songs are playing, it's difficult to remove
yourself from them long enough to trace his musical genealogy. And that's
what separates him from just about everyone else who's doing this kind of
thing in 2008, even the really good ones, like Ezra Furman. Furman does a
damn good Dylan impression, but it's still a Dylan impression. Matsson is
nobody but Matsson, and his album is a treasure on its own terms.

And so it seems woefully inadequate to call his music folk, though that's
essentially what it is. But gentle, coffee-shop balladry it is not; this is rugged,
rowdy stuff, fuller and richer in sound, more lively and energetic, than any
guy-and-his-guitar setup has any right to be. Matsson strums the hell out of
that guitar of his-frantically, breathlessly at times-and his singing is equally
rough and tumble.

The album is a small, fleeting thing that seems to disappear into empty tape
hiss as suddenly and mysteriously as it begins, but that only makes it more
powerful; when it ends, the words and melodies are still ringing in your ears.
And if the whole thing sounds somehow dusty and well-worn, that's not
because it's trying to ape any particular time or place, but because it seems
to exist entirely outside of time.
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1. (00:02:47) The Tallest Man On Earth - I Won't Be Found
2. (00:03:34) The Tallest Man On Earth - Pistol Dreams
3. (00:02:56) The Tallest Man On Earth - Honey Won't You Let Me In
4. (00:02:37) The Tallest Man On Earth - Shallow Grave
5. (00:03:17) The Tallest Man On Earth - Where Do My Bluebirds Fly
6. (00:03:56) The Tallest Man On Earth - The Gardner
7. (00:02:01) The Tallest Man On Earth - The Blizzard's Never Seen The Desert Sands
8. (00:03:05) The Tallest Man On Earth - The Sparrow And The Medicine
9. (00:02:47) The Tallest Man On Earth - Into The Stream
10. (00:03:23) The Tallest Man On Earth - This Wind

Playing Time.........: 00:30:23
Total Size...........: 169.00 MB (FLAC)
Total Size...........: 70.20 MB (MP3)



(FLAC)

http://rapidshare.com/files/410280228/TMOE-ShallF.rar

(MP3)

http://rapidshare.com/files/410276331/TMOE-ShallM.rar