Yet while Shallow Grave was almost completely a hard-hitting, gut-punching affair, shouting declarations constantly, on The Wild Hunt Matsson has learned to affect a whisper, or at least be a little softer when the occasion strikes. Like its predecessor, The Wild Hunt is built upon swift, brisk melodies and a mastery of the acoustic guitar the ability to fingerpick gingerly than strum violently without even a second going past, and without ever seeming flashy. He trumps his incredible debut in every way without resorting to drastic tactics in order to avoid some sophomore slump, instead subtly perfecting his approach to great effect. Armed with nothing more than some sort of hidden, God-given knowledge of how the human mind actually works, and an acoustic guitar (and a piano holy sh it!), Matsson becomes an actual artist right before our eyes on this, his best album. This makes The Wild Hunt kind of like a little revelation, then. Like, those emotions and s hit, or just something relatable to get me through the night with having to resort to getting totally fu cked. Matsson makes music that is emphatic and nostalgic and expressive, all of these at once, which is something someone like me needs most of the time, something I can feed on. ItвЂ™s also why, by God, I might even like Matsson more than Dylan. But Matsson does, or at least his songs are genuine enough for me to think so, and this is why the Dylan-TMOE comparison is thus rendered moot. Dylan, as damn good as he is, never got that wide-ranging in his early days he never went for the heartstrings or tried to emphasize with all those messy emotions of the listener вЂ“ perhaps only because he didnвЂ™t give a s hit. To further clarify: MatssonвЂ™s music is filled with statements like вЂњIвЂ™m the light of the middle of every manвЂ™s fallвЂќ and вЂњI want to be the King of SpainвЂќ, but also вЂњlove is fake so I get hurtвЂќ, in almost the next breath.

But while Dylan uses his music as a platform, MatssonвЂ™s stuff is much more for himself, being expressive but fragile in how personal these expressions are almost as if his whole вЂњmaking musicвЂќ thing is only therapeutic, and thus only released to the public because itвЂ™s just too damn good for it not to be. Yes, the two are folk mavericks whose material is instrumentally skeletal, and, yes, both have voices that are acidic and abrasive, as well as emotional and humane. IвЂ™m not about to say that the comparison isnвЂ™t inviting, or even inaccurate, but the off-handedness with which many compare Kristian Matsson to early Bob Dylan is really starting to irk me. Review Summary: The Wild Hunt is an album built on contradictions, and is all the better for it.

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