One writer for the U.K. magazine Q tagged Matthew Hegarty, the primary force of Matthew and the Atlas, as “the British Bon Iver,” and the comparison is apt in spite of its nationalism.
Like Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, Hegarty layers numerous other musical styles over a folk-music base. Also like Vernon, Hegarty is possessed of a voice that is both sword—to cut across the grain of his words—and shield—to protect himself from giving too much away, although Vernon’s shield is a hovering falsetto and Hegarty’s is a dramatic vibrato.
A more important difference is that Temple, the second Matthew and the Atlas album, isn’t so drastic a departure from the first, 2014’s Other Rivers, as the second Bon Iver album, 2011’s Bon Iver, was from the first, 2007’s For Emma, Forever Ago. Instead, it’s a widescreen expansion of its predecessor.
Recording with Foreign Fields, an electronic-folk duo from Wisconsin (Vernon’s home state) now located in Nashville, Hegarty doesn’t add more synthesizers so much as he blends them more thoroughly into the songs than he did with Other Rivers.
The overall effect is reminiscent of Bruce Cockburn’s pop-oriented efforts, and also of many other efforts, from the 1980s to now, to orient post-punk elements toward more conventional pop-rock paths.
Hegarty’s feline emotionalism, nearly as strong as that from Anohni/Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, trips the overdrive on the determined movement of the title track or the electronically augmented 1950s sway of “Gutter Heart.”
It also finds its most lucid expression in plainer story songs like “When the Light Hits the Water,” where Hegarty nudges details into place as they flow along the melodies. More spiritual than religious, Temple seeks the numinous in its mingled tide of the old fashioned and the modern. Perhaps Hegarty truly is the British Bon Iver.
|
|
