Kristian Matsson returned to his native Sweden to record “Just Beyond Endless Mountain,” a record rooted in nature: “I’m becoming more cynical, but I’m looking for those moments where you marvel at how cool a tree is. »
Kristian Matsson, aka The Tallest Man On Earth, got up at 5 a.m. to play the violin. He spent the rest of the morning getting his hands dirty: picking mushrooms, doing chores on his property, visiting the construction site of the concert hall he is renovating ten minutes away, and of which he is for the moment both the owner and the cleaner. “Today I was a caricature of myself”says Matsson, in video on Zoom, dressed in a red flannel shirt, while the light streams in through the window behind him.
Many of his days are like this. Fixing things and writing songs, traveling around on quad bikes, taking care of the horses. It might seem like a scene taken from the valleys of the Appalachians, where Matsson once drew his musical inspiration, but he is actually in Sweden, in the county of Dalarna, where he was born. This is where he now lives full-time, after years spent in Brooklyn and nearly two decades and seven albums chasing American musical traditions. More often than not, here, he’s just a guy on his lawnmower, eyes fixed on the horizon.
For Matsson, this return goes beyond the simple question of location. Since childhood, he had avoided the Swedish folk traditions that defined his country and his youth: violins, flutes, embroidered costumes, polska dances. All this was for the tourists who came to the Midsummer celebrations, wearing cheap flower crowns, and the music itself was too soft, too “rounded at the corners”explains Matsson. “Obviously, I started listening to punk rock instead and wanted to be Iggy Pop. I definitely didn’t want to be a fiddler in a weird costume. » He discovered Bob Dylan and the Delta blues, much more exciting than what was happening right outside his window.
On his new album, Just Beyond Endless MountainMatsson no longer runs away from these traditions: he embraces the sounds of his Swedish heritage in urgent and emotionally gripping folk songs. He no longer shies away from the flute or the violin, and he has understood that none of these traditions is really that different from the others once reduced to the essentials. “I learned a lot of Skip James songs, and the tonality is very close to some field recordings here”he said. “The way to treat a minor or major tonality. They are even the same words, but in Swedish, as in an old English ballad, in banjo music or in the blues. »
It all happened a bit by accident. Matsson returned during Covid to the farm he owns in Dalarna, with no intention of settling there for good. But when restrictions were lifted and he returned to tour, America’s call was no longer as strong as before. A serious relationship ended and, most importantly, his father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which made Matsson want to reconnect much more closely with the land and culture that saw him grow up. This also highlighted, in his eyes, the differences in the health system between the two countries.
Matsson grew up with America, and American music, like Grail: folk and blues icons like Dylan and Skip James, punk groups, counterculture. He still likes it all, but he surprised himself by becoming “curious about what he had taken for granted” in Sweden. Curious not about what his life (or his music) would be like if he returned to where he came from, but what a new future would look like in which he could embrace buried facets of himself and his own history, and make them a natural part of his creative narrative.
When Matsson’s father died in 2024, this curiosity only grew. Anyone who has lost a loved one to Alzheimer’s or dementia knows that long before physical loss, it is a long, heartbreaking process of loss. “I felt like I hadn’t said goodbye to him”he confides. “For not having asked him all the questions. » Finding these answers was partly a return to his father’s roots, and to his own. To the music that existed right outside his window and that had punctuated his childhood. Pick up the violin, an instrument that “bite him every time he took it”delving into field recordings of Swedish folk music. He found not only nostalgia there, but also joy.
As Just Beyond Endless MountainMatsson is hopeful without being naive. He turns to his community, to his culture, to youth as his radar. He’s noticed that more and more bands are popping up lately: kids playing overdriven guitars and cranking the amps to full blast.
