Kristian Matsson has spent much of his career looking across the Atlantic for inspiration, drawing deeply from the American folk traditions that helped shape The Tallest Man on Earth. On Just Beyond Endless Mountain, his eighth studio album, he turns his attention much closer to home. After returning to Dalarna, the central Swedish region where he grew up, Matsson began exploring the polskas and other traditional music he encountered as a child, incorporating those sounds alongside field recordings and the expressive guitar playing that has defined his work. The result is not a rejection of his musical past, but a more personal expansion of it.
“Colors,” the first song released from the album, offers an inviting introduction to that shift. Matsson’s intricate fingerpicked guitar remains at the center, but horns, strings and a gently rolling rhythm give the song an organic fullness that feels different from the stark arrangements associated with some of his earlier work. His weathered, instantly recognizable voice remains wonderfully imperfect, moving between fragility and strength as the arrangement gradually opens around him. It is familiar enough to feel like The Tallest Man on Earth while still suggesting that Matsson has found a new set of colors with which to work.
“Deliver Me From Trying” takes a more restless approach, pairing driving guitar with propulsive percussion and distorted vocals. The tension in the performance fits its theme, as Matsson sings about the exhaustion that can come from continually pushing forward. “Overboda,” meanwhile, reveals a much gentler side of the record. Written for his friend Rolf’s wedding, the song began with fiddle before Matsson adapted it for guitar, and its emotional directness gives it the feeling of a private memory made public. These songs point toward an album concerned not simply with geography and musical heritage, but with the process of reconnecting with parts of yourself that have been left behind.
That sense of reconnection may ultimately be what makes Just Beyond Endless Mountain so intriguing. The album takes Matsson back to the landscape and traditions of his childhood, but it doesn’t sound like an exercise in nostalgia. Instead, he appears to be folding those sounds into the musical vocabulary he has spent nearly two decades developing. There is still the restless guitar work, the distinctive voice and the intimate songwriting, but now they exist alongside influences that have been part of Matsson’s life all along. Just Beyond Endless Mountain arrives October 9 through ANTI- Records, and the material released so far suggests an artist looking backward in order to discover somewhere new to go. – Jason Felton