Matt Bauer - The Jessamine County Book of the Living (album stream)

After writing an entire album centered on the unsolved 1968 murder of a girl near his childhood home (2008’s The Island Moved in the Storm), Matt Bauer has again turned to the subject of his native Kentucky with The Jessamine County Book of the Living, a record that is an intimate, personal, and often fantastical interpretation of the natural world.



Dead deer sing songs of hope to the living, ants hunt down ghost mites in a forest of feathers on a heron’s back, horses drift to sleep wishing they knew how to speak, a man and a coyote meet each other at the edge of the suburbs and the forest – each wondering at the alien creature that has crossed into his world.

At times intensely spare, but more often blooming into sweeping orchestral arrangements, The Jessamine County Book of the Living, is a vision of central and eastern Kentucky as if arranged by Moondog and filtered through Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. Bauer cites the human headed deer in Mononoke, whose every step brings life and destruction, as a recurring inspiration. The record exudes a fascination with the overwhelming abundance, power, beauty, and, ultimately, crushingly neutral indifference of the natural world. As the speaker in the song “All the Wolves That I’ve Known” says, “It’s almost a horror how joy springs up and chokes the dark!”

Along with Bauer’s unique banjo melodies, played in a style that owes as much to Indonesian gamelan as it does to the music of Appalachia, the album boasts nearly 20 guest musicians from his current home of Brooklyn and his former home, San Francisco. Among them are frequent collaborator Jolie Holland, Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors), Mariee Sioux, Jay and Alex Foote (Sufjan Stevens, Welcome Wagon), and a ten piece orchestra of strings, brass, woodwinds, vibraphone and chimes.

The Jessamine County Book of the Living is an album both highly emotional and oddly calming, alternately sprawling and economical, with light and beauty even in the darkest corners, and a darkness in the brightest light.



Early Press For The Jessamine County Book of the Living:

"Brilliant" - New York Magazine

"Matt Bauer conjures a warm yet slightly eerie mood with his banjo driven alt folk. The Greenpoint-via-Kentucky folkster has a gorgeous whispery way with a song." - Time Out New York

"At the risk of preaching to the choir, I will state again that Matt Bauer's newest, The Jessamine County Book Of The Living, is easily one of this year's strongest releases." - My Old Kentucky Blog

"A continuation of greatness which demonstrates Bauer's firm grasp of the songwriting craft." - Muzzle of Bees

"Moody folk that's as much Appalachian as it is apparition. His last album was about the murder of a girl near his childhood home in 1968. His new full length, with Bauer's pensive banjo and guest vocals from Jolie Holland and The Dirty Projectors' Angel Deradoorian, is no less haunting." - IFC

Links
http://www.mattbauermusic.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Matt-Bauer/97593575243
http://twitter.com/#!/@mattbauermusic
http://www.myspace.com/mattbauer
http://www.last.fm/music/Matt%2520Bauer
http://www.riotactmedia.com/artists/mattbauer.php