New Album Release: Matt Stevens - Relic (Preorder now, releases Sept. 26th)

A couple days ago I received a message from Matt Stevens. I'm always honoured to have an artist I feature on my blog contact me personally, as it rarely happens. I'm usually the one to go, "HAY MAN LOVE THE MUSIC." Hah hah.

So anyway, after having listened to this new album I have to say that Matt has evolved rapidly through his music. I absolutely love his Echo album. It is acoustic, it is jazzy, it is funky, it had a wonderful Spanish feel... it is one of my favourite acoustic albums. And then came Ghost, which I feel was a little more emotional, and a little darker than Echo. And now Relic... this is drastically different from his prior albums but at the same time it's still Matt. Relic is on a much grander scale with an entire band backing him. But much like his previous albums, there is a dynamic progression with each song, but now even more-so.

The album starts a little surprising, if you had heard Matt's prior work. "Are these ID3 tags correct? Is this really Matt Stevens?" This song starts off kind of... pop-y. As the song progresses it certainly doesn't stay pop-y, and you definitely start to hear that Matt Stevens that you're familiar with. It then gets even more intense and sort of post-rock-y as the next song, Relic, plays. During the progression of the album we hear different variations of instruments and different emotions. And then we come to the centre of the album where we hear some more classic Matt Stevens style. As the album finishes we're tossed with an unexpectedly heavy track and then mellow back down to something like an ambient post-rock.

This is definitely a different Matt Stevens. I love his purely acoustic stuff, but this album... I cannot stop listening to it! This is easily one of my favourite albums of 2011.


Relic will be released tomorrow. But if you're impatient you can preorder the album on Matt's Bandcamp page.

http://mattstevens.bandcamp.com/releases

Also check out his prior albums, Echo and Ghost.


[Last.fm] [Bandcamp] [Facebook] [Website]