There was always an element of rampant melancholy in
the music of Matt Elliott, but when he was going around
calling himself Third Eye Foundation, it remained constrained
and under constant guard, only giving a cinematic shine
to songs otherwise too complex to be understood by most.
Yet, for the last three years, Elliott has ditched his
cover, finally daring to bare his soul and unleashing
the visceral darkness that had been tormenting him,
splattering it all over the superb and raw The
Mess We Made.
Two years on, Elliott has moved away from his native
Bristol to settle down in a corner of France, but this
retreat has done very little to soften the temperament
of his music. Already, The Sinking Ship Song,
on The Mess
We Made felt like a drunken stagger through
life, too painful to watch yet impossible to cut short.
On Drinking Songs, Elliott takes this further,
etching muffled violence and despair across each song,
seemingly repeating himself over and over, yet constantly
nuancing his musical phrases to reflect changing moods.
Like Jacques Brel before him, Elliott strips his songs
of any superfluous attribute, only leaving them bare,
exposing their guts, and his, for all to see. Drinking
Songs is tormented and sombre, smells of piss and
cheep beer and fucks prostitutes in dark alleyways.
Elliott has drifted away from conventional pop music,
seeking refuge in a cockeyed bohemian folk built on
shards of Slavic and Eastern European music, not miles
apart from the music of Yann
Tiersen, for whom he remixed La Dispute
back in 1999. Yet, unlike Tiersen’s,
Elliott's music is perverse, raw and visceral. A fine
craftsman, he weaves his voice right into a series of
desperate soundscapes to create a superbly haunting
soundtrack, especially on the epic The Kursks
or bleak A Waste Of Blood. His arrangements
are both extremely delicate and powerful, with orchestral
undertones running pretty much throughout the whole
album. This gives his music a totally unique touch and
contributes to the general bleak atmosphere.
The twenty-minute long The Maid We Messed asserts
the link between The Third Eye Foundation and Elliott
as a solo artist when he incorporates a drum’n’bass
sequence over layers of cloudy noises. Although slightly
unexpected, and somewhat disconcerting considering that
it comes at the end of a predominantly drum-less record,
it doesn’t distract much from the delicate nature
of Dinking Songs, but leaves the listener wondering
what step might Elliott take next.
If The Mess We Made revealed Matt Elliott as
a solo artist with a far wider vision than he had until
then presented, away from the relative shelter of his
Third Eye Foundation, Drinking Songs demonstrates
how he has taken this sudden exposure into consideration
and carved his own world into it. Here, he continues
to exorcise his demons with sheer class and ingenuity,
creating an almost perfect record in the process.
4.8/5 |
