| Mark Mattson did not originally set out to make an elegy to family and friends lost in recent years, but early on realized this was the direction in which the work with the Tall Grass Captains was leading. "The songs were all coming out with this turbulent, restless, sometimes melancholy and sometimes menacing undercurrent. On top of this I was piling layers of pretty melodies with intersnaking counterpoints. I realized this was how I was trying to impose some order onto these shattering, unexpected experiences that take you all over the map emotionally. Initially I resisted that notion--mostly because it seemed almost too obvious! But once I faced it and gave into it, the whole shape and reason for the record--for even why I was doing music--materialized. And it just took over." The result, She Moved Through, is fearless, otherworldly, and ambitious in an way that feels both humorous and grave.
Mattson’s songs on She Moved Through reflect the experiences of an urban parochial childhood in his native Chicago, as well as evoke the rural Midwestern expanses of his current home in Dekalb, Illinois, where he also plays guitar and producer for indie up-and-comers Grenadier. A veteran of the Chicago rock scene as the leader of the Klugmaknotts and Luminous, Mattson’s work has consistently galvanized audiences since the 90s, winning praise from critics for his unique songwriting talent. He is back with the guitars (and most everything else) on She Moved Through, while Craig Swafford, Mattson’s longtime collaborator in all these groups, once again provides drums, percussion, and devil’s advocate services. Together with Grenadier’s enfant terrible, Jeremy Heroldt, they form the core of the Ubique collective, with other friends stopping by to lend their talents and beer to the enterprise.
She Moved Through is one of those records with one foot in this world and one in the next—some half-remembered dream that suddenly startles us by its familiarity. The Tall Grass Captains of Greater Chicago describe a world where dented doors of dreary city streets open into great galactic vistas, where saints compete for the attention of the princesses while satellites spy from above, and dragonflies hunt queens with the power to never let us die.
“For this record I was thinking of song-cycle-type records like the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle with its majestic melancholy, or the Unicorn album by Tyrannosaurus Rex, before they became T-Rex--so serious and fantastical at the same time. I admire artists like the Circulatory System, Neutral Milk Hotel, or the Flaming Lips who do such an ingenious job of taking an almost baroque approach to rock music while still creating work that's timeless, hard-driving, valiant and moving." The album title itself nods to the great, haunted Irish ballad "She Moved Through the Fair." Throughout the record there is also a tunefulness that suggests despite his hard rock background, Mattson never got over the AM pop radio of his early 70s childhood where the likes of Sweet, Paul Simon, and the Miracles all once rubbed shoulders. This lends an air of fun and hope to the sometimes difficult, tragic subject matter.
“I couldn’t continue to write songs and pretend that these individual losses of family and friends, all young women, didn’t affect me to the core,” Mattson explains. “But I didn’t want to make an album that just made people feel sad. I wanted to take that experience of loss and take the despair and unfairness from it and make something about the mystery of it all, the beauty of being alive.” |
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