Matt Langley: Featherbones (Hometown)

 |   |  1 min read

Matt Langley: Love and Money
Matt Langley: Featherbones (Hometown)

Langley's rootsy folk-cum-alt.country EP Lost Companions of 2007 – recorded in Wellington – announced a mature lyricist and a singer with a delivery like the best Americana artists (James McMurtry particularly) with a little Dylanesque drawl. It went past most, and this debut album is doing the same with few mainstream media reviews, despite it including 7.13 for which he won an APRA songwriting award (country category).

Again with a small band, Langley presents his crafted, unpretentious songs in an understated way and he has lost some of the vocal mannerisms of the EP for a more personal and convincing result.

The plodding Ride It Out isn't the most promising opener but thereafter in the moody Everybody Knows (which soars powerfully), the ballad I Don't Believe It, that award-winner 7.13 and country-rock of The Lion and the Virgin, and the acoustic folk of July confirm Langley is an assured songwriter with a number of strong, interpretive voices at his disposal. On Love and Money he adopts a worried, world-weariness, for Blue Eyed Once he has a pastoral, poetic optimism coupled with a sense of hurt reflection, and Let It Go Now delivers jaunty folk-rock with an acceptance of being “ordinary”, but by declaring his love you know/he knows he isn't.

Langley's sophistication isn't bannered obviously, and this is as fine a singer-songwriter debut album as you could expect.

Like the sound of this? Then check out this.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Bert Jansch: Avocet 40th Anniversary Edition (Earth/Southbound)

Bert Jansch: Avocet 40th Anniversary Edition (Earth/Southbound)

The late Scottish singer/guitarist and songwriter Bert Jansch who co-founded the influential Pentangle and died in 2011, left a vast legacy of albums of which many are still coming to terms with.... > Read more

Dave's True Story: Simple Twist of Fate (BePop Records)

Dave's True Story: Simple Twist of Fate (BePop Records)

A couple of weeks ago I posted the excellent Drive All Night, the debut solo album by Kelly Flint (see tag) and noted that while she was now in that vague alt.country camp she'd apparently been in... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

UB40: Just another labour of love

UB40: Just another labour of love

It was a few years ago now, but UB40 were back for another New Zealand tour. Well pardon my lack of enthusiasm. It's not that, like most critics, I don't have much time for their MOR reggae. I... > Read more

I WANNA BE YOUR MAN, RECONSIDERED (2020): The hit the Beatles stole and on-sold

I WANNA BE YOUR MAN, RECONSIDERED (2020): The hit the Beatles stole and on-sold

Most people who know the story of the Beatles' success are aware that before they conquered America by appearing on the Ed Skelton Show in February 1964 they had already made their reputation in... > Read more