CD review: ‘Animal Boy’ by Matt the Electrician

By Michael Corcoran | Monday, October 12, 2009, 02:20 PM

Matt the Electrician

‘Animal Boy’

(self-released)

Grade: A

“Sweet” is a word that doesn’t mean what it did when I was coming up. Kids now use it like “awesome” or “excellent,” but sweet is a word that can say a lot. For instance, when I tell you that Matt the Electrician’s new album “Animal Boy” is entirely sweet you know that it’s melodically kindhearted. You know it tells rich, simple stories and that it’s the kind of record you don’t download to your computer because music like this should be on something that goes around and around.

Sweet is the sound that can lighten your mood. It’s the right Journey cover (“Faithfully”) at the right time (opening track), interpreted without a single drop of campiness. It’s a falsetto-pop song like “Divided By 13” that sounds like it came from a dream that had all the old, vintage video games. “Innocence” and “sincerity” are two other words that have had better days.

“Animal Boy” sounds like ex-working electrician Matt Sever and co-producer Mark Addison, who each also play about a dozen instruments, couldn’t wait to get into the studio every morning. They’ve made a big little record that gently, warmly takes the listener from a rainy night in Osaka, Japan, to the customer service department of Walmart. The album’s most representative instrument is the breezy “banjolele,” which tells its own story of a hillbilly buying a one-way ticket to a tropical paradise.

It’s been a great couple of months for singer-songwriter albums in Austin, with Lee Barber, Bob Schneider, Robert Earl Keen and Sam Baker putting out music that sounds like it will last. Put “Animal Boy” in with that bunch, and give it a gold star if you’ll take Squeeze over Leonard Cohen every day of the week but Sunday.

Backstage

Backstage before our SOLD-OUT show at The Cactus Cafe…..that’s right, i said SOLD-OUT!!!…..thank you everyone who came out….you rule!

another blog post…this time an interview done by the ever talented Spike Gillespie….check out the austinist

m

My favorite music blog, songsillinois, has posted something about the new record……go check it out, and read it every day while you’re at it….

m

Well, the first review of my new CD ‘Animal Boy’ is in…check it out!

“I don’t know what takes more guts for a singer-songwriter:  covering Journey’s all-time wimpiest power ballad without a trace of hipster irony, or giving equally honest props to Wal-Mart.  Matt the Electrician (aka Matt Sever) does both on Animal Boy, which opens with a disarmingly sincere acoustic take on “Faithfully,” and later finds him thanking a minion of the chain store evil empire for some particularly fine (and day-saving) customer service in the auto department.  That’s the extent of the surprises you’ll find here-unless, of course, you’re new to the wonderful world of Matt the Electrician’s music, distinguished by his warm, raspy voice and playful mix of wry-but sweet lyrics, buoyantly hummable melodies and a veritable toy box full of musical instruments (banjolele, Wurlitzer, frying pans, etc.)  If that’s the case, Animal Boy will charm your lights out.  And if you’re already aquainted with Mr. Matt’s work, make room on your shelf for his best record yet.  No complaints here.”-Richard Skanse, Texas Music Magazine

check out the Look page on this website for more photos from Japan and the West Coast Tour…

We went to Monkey Mountain on our day off in Kyoto….i was terrified….still am really…..but not sure how else i would have been able to watch a monkey get out of his bath….(assuming it was a he-monkey…couldn’t get close enough to check)

Home is fantastic, and blurry, and cooler than expected…and i have more to tell you about Japan…and i will….all in good time…

in Osaka it rained and it poured, but we were safe inside Denny’s….and a Denny’s where there is no moon over anything, only hot bowls of noodles and i’m not sure what….apparently Michael Fracasso liked it, so we were taken there…arigato Michael…

although it seems customary in Japan to give gifts, and often handkerchiefs seem to be the gift to give, the band Turntable Films in Kyoto, were somewhat confused by my gift giving, although they came around to it…..i am a crazy foreigner…