Matt Bauer - The Island Moved in the Storm (review)

Here's a review of Matt Bauer's The Island Moved in the Storm I wrote back in 2008.

artist: Matt Bauer
title: The Island Moved in the Storm
label: La Société Expéditionnaire
release: 2008

Matt Bauer's banjo-driven folk songs hang together on a gossamer thread, moving from background to foreground with an understated power. The Island Moved in the Storm, his third album and first for La Société Expéditionnaire is a travelogue of worn memories with the gravitas that makes even the mundane elements of the past grow more significant even as they blur out of focus. 

Singer/Songwriters mining the darker side of Americana is nothing new, but Matt Bauer shares some of the same traits that made Iron & Wine's debut stand out: the hushed delivery, lo-fi recording and use of pre-pop melodies makes the music timeless even as it transcends the confines of a strict folk style and become something its own. The instrumentation is predominately just Bauer's voice and banjo, though sometimes embellished by female backing vocals, horns, strings, keyboards and light percussion, courtesy of members of Dirty Projectors, St. Vincent, and others. 

Though the songs could easily slide into theatrical bathos, their economy keeps them from going over the edge. Just as the sentimentality threatens to devolve into bombast the arrangement pulls back, circling on itself and repeating a phrase, letting the listener know that it doesn't subscribe to expected songwriting norms. The point of the buildup isn't to eventually explode, but to revel in the missed opportunities and connections that the songs describe. Like the static shots of rainy landscapes and banal scenes that fill Andrei Tarkovsky films, there are sections of the songs designed for reflection and not necessarily to move the plot along. 

Matt Bauer's baroque arrangements and use of mostly acoustic instrumentation will probably peg him as another dark poet of the unseen America, but he seems as prepared as any for the role. His songs are suffused with the same hidden melancholy of modern life as William Eggleston photographs; seemingly unremarkable scenes unfold to reveal layers of memories and horror.