Matthew Ryan – Autumn of discontent
Ryan survived A&M’s turbulent consolidation amid major-label mergers. “Some people spoke up and said, ‘You should check this guy out.’ Apparently Tom Whalley, one of the heads of Interscope, did and liked it. I met with Tom, and he wasn’t gonna let me go. So it really wasn’t my choice.”
The songs Ryan had in the can at that point — “I Hear A Symphony”, “Sunk”, “Heartache Weather” — form the emotional core of the new record. “David Ricketts [who produced May Day] and I thought of doing a soft, piano, Chet Baker kind of record….That’s what my paradoxes are: I really like broken-sounding things, but also really lush things.”
The thirteen songs on East Autumn Grin are of a piece with May Day, in their naked verse and voice, the images piling up and colliding not to obscure or distance, but to cut to the core. Ryan, however, grins far less frequently than on May Day. He’s pressing further, more violently, into private and political darkness.
“To get to the point, yes, it’s a really dark record,” he says. “There’s infidelity, and darkness, and sadness, but it’s implied on the first record. There’s an implication in a song like ‘Beautiful Fool’, but songs like ‘Sunk’ and ‘3rd Of October’ are talking about it. That’s not all they’re about, but that’s what’s being reacted to. That’s pretty fucking dark. And then the idea, I guess I have to accept this, that the dark is part of the deal.”
In looking for a musical language to match his new, less evasive songs — the clever wordplay of May Day is all but gone — Ryan turned in part to Trina Shoemaker, whose engineering work for Sheryl Crow and especially Giant Sand had both the dense low end and the musical spaces he wanted.
“What’s important is that you continue to move forward, but understand the past,” he says. “This isn’t a Massive Attack record, but I’m not sure just how important Massive Attack is. I wanted to make a cinematic record, to be emotional, for the language to be first and foremost, but I also wanted everything about it — the artwork, the music — to be a mini-movie, a novel, something that you can crawl inside.”
He also turned to the guitar-based rock music of his youth. The opening “3rd Of October” and the midpoint “I Must Love Leaving” are like homages to the hunger, zeal and cascade of guitars on U2’s October and The Unforgettable Fire, or The Blue Nile’s now-forgotten Hats.
“I grew up in the ’80s,” Ryan acknowledges. “I rebelled against my parents. I listened to Jesus & Mary Chain, Echo & the Bunnymen, and those first U2 records. That became part of the dialogue, part of the influence. I always wanted to find, as someone who appreciates American music, the balance.
“The intention wasn’t to make a big-sounding record, but to be emotional. To me that pointed to Unforgettable Fire, October, and The Blue Nile. I’m sick of the detachment of a lot of music. If it turns me into a bullseye because it’s emotional music, rather than bravado or irony, then so be it.”
Winter
The story, as it’s usually told, begins with the smart, angry rocker, barely old enough to buy a six-pack, making his first record, wrestling with his demons, growling lines like “Happiness is a miserable son of a bitch.” He has a family, grows up, no longer a thief tearing at the world with his god-given talent. He finds something worth holding on to, something lasting and meaningful, if not in his music, then in love, family, life, himself.