Album Review: The Tallest Man On Earth - Dark Bird Is Home

The Tallest Man On Earth arrives with a fourth album, Dark Bird Is Home, his first since 2012’s high watermark There’s No Leaving Now.

It’s another characteristically opaque set of songs that feel like a warm hug and cold shower simultaneously. Kristian Matsson employs a full band on a number of songs and this new aesthetic wrestles with his traditionally wild folk sensibilities, changing his songs into something resembling pop. A largely successful experiment, the potential for a wider audience will rely on people’s ability to embrace the idiosyncratic nasally delivery that’s front and centre. 

The press on this describes it as his most personal and direct release yet. Indeed, this album is slower, more deliberate and tries very hard to sidle up and whisper in your ear. The issue, as it always is with Matsson, is that the lyrics keep us all at arm’s length. The images and ideas are hidden in deep, abstract metaphors, and we’re given no legend, no Rosetta Stone, to decipher anything. The cover depicts a girl in dark, heavy clothing, back to us, staring at a weather-board house, presumably the “dark bird” coming home. Nothing in the album reflects this directly, and we’re left only with impressions.

The production is great. It’s a rich palette of soft, grainy textures that coat beautifully written wintery folk ballads. Several songs burst at the seams with Irish trad music influences, and the whole thing feels lived in and homely. It’s not his best work, but it’s certainly the easiest one to listen to.