I Love You. It's a Fever Dream

Kristian Matsson is a singer-songwriter from Dalarna, Sweden, who performs under the stage name of The Tallest Man on Earth. Matsson grew up in Leksand, and began his solo career in 2006, having previously been the lead singer of the indie band Montezumas. His music has often drawn comparisonsto the music of Bob Dylan.

“Last summer, Kristian Matsson lamented that steady touring had slowed the arrival of I Love You. It’s a Fever Dream., his fifth album as the Tallest Man on Earth. “I can’t write good stuff on tour,” he complained. “I can’t write about life on a tour bus.” Ironically, Fever Dream arrives as a focused and frequently lovely rumination on life lived on a tour bus. Songs unfold in hotel bars, on open roads, beneath vast blue bowls of rural sky. The rhythms of perpetual travel pulse beneath acoustic melodies that lie somewhere between Dylan and Sufjan—a few gentle, a few forceful. With depth and delicacy, Matsson explores the banalities and oddities of tour, like the phenomenon of performing for an adoring audience to whom you are a stranger.

Matsson’s music mirrors his lyrical themes. Though he remains devoted to sparse arrangements of guitar, banjo, and harmonica, these songs begin toveer into more adventurous territory. “Hotel Bar” introduces a horn section, and “The Running Styles of New York” is bookended by momentary blips of electronics. These new elements are deployed sparingly and selectively, a sprinkle of salt to draw new favourite from familiar sound. Tempos vary, too, from raucous stomping to slow, plaintive fingerpicking—as if he’s stretching, sprinting, growing fatigued, slowing down. As in his words, he wrestles with the quesstion of where to go, and how quickly.” - Pitchfork