East Autumn Grin [Extra tracks]

East Autumn Grin [Extra tracks]

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
After his 1997 debut, May Day, Pennsylvania-born singer-songwriter Matthew Ryan was acclaimed as the spiritual heir to everyone from Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen to Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits. Ryan expands on those daunting expectations, yet also manages to blunt them here--his frequently astringent musical and lyrical vision is distinctly his own. And if it's true that beneath the chest of every pessimist beats the heart of an optimist just wishing their eyes weren't so damned good, Ryan just may be their wistful troubadour. "Just remember," Ryan rasps on the chorus of "Heartache Weather," "things are gonna get worse before they get better." A cliché perhaps, but a viewpoint that is in perfect sync with Ryan's clear-eyed antisentimentality. Ryan's songs also possess a seemingly effortless melodic sense, here wed to production that ranges from a warts-and-all live sound to the moody and baroque. Whether ruminating on the devastating potential of modern romantic myths, drawing parallels between his fate and his country's on "Ballad of Limping Man" (with Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner adding mournful trumpet flourishes), or chronicling the media's commodification of tragedy on "The World Is on Fire" (heralded by a Newmanesque interpolation of "Camptown Races"), Ryan usually finds some glimmer of hope, a telling sign of a troubled romantic trying to make the best of a world gone bad. --Jerry McCulley

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East Autumn Grin [Extra tracks]

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