Contributed By: Beyond 2000
Created On: Monday, 31 March 2008
Hits: 47
 Matthew Ryan Vs. Silver State Having dug (hopefully) as deep as he could go, Ryan now begins the long process of digging himself out – and to that end, his 11th release, Matthew Ryan vs. the Silver State, is more hopeful and outward-looking than its predecessor. This doesn’t mean it’s a happy album, necessarily – like Westerberg or Springsteen, Ryan’s got a voice built for heavy lifting, the kind of thorny rasp that could take even the corniest of ballads (hell, probably even “You Light Up My Life”) and give it extra meaning – but it does raise the rock quotient noticeably. This change in direction, spelled out in the album’s title, is due in large part to the full-time involvement of Ryan’s band, the Silver State; even if the songs are cut from the same cloth as his earlier work, the heightened level of interplay brings out new colors in the material. It’s vaguely akin to the difference between Springsteen solo and with the E Street Band – only where the Boss uses his bandmates to thicken and amplify the beat of his rock & roll heart, Ryan uses the Silver State to disassemble his sound and remove all the superfluous bits.
What it lacks in moving parts, Silver State more than makes up in power. The rock landscape is littered with musicians who have exhausted themselves (or their audiences) with the struggle for salvation, and we’re always hungry for more – an appetite satirized by the title of Todd Rundgren’s 1983 album, The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect. What sets Matthew Ryan apart from a lot of his peers, however, is his music’s continual evolution; he seems to understand, on some level, that all that struggling is bound to be for naught unless you actually learn from it once in a while. As a wise man once said, there’s a difference between cleaning up a pigpen and wallowing in shit – but there’s a finer line between the two than you might think, and better men than Matthew Ryan have tripped on it.
In Silver State’s press kit, Ryan says these songs are about himself and his friends – where they’ve been, but not where they’re going, because, as he puts it, “I want everyone to win.” Everyone can’t win, of course, but that doesn’t rob the sentiment – or this album – of its beauty. For all the constant chatter about music’s increasing disposability, Matthew Ryan stands as proof that there are still artists who are down in the trenches for the long haul. If you’ve ever believed in the power of rock & roll’s saving grace, or been moved by three chords and a 4/4 beat, you owe it to yourself to seek out this album.
 
|
Reviews 
Awards