Matthew E. White - Big Inner [2012][EAC,log,cue. FLAC]

Artist: Matthew E. White
Release: Big Inner
Discogs: 4247589
Released: 2012-08-21 / 2013
Label: Spacebomb Records, Hometapes / Domino
Catalog#: SB002, HT056 / WIGCD307
Format: FLAC / Lossless / Log (100%) / Cue / CD
Country: Europe
Style: Rock, Pop, Folk, World, & Country, Folk Rock, Indie Rock

Tracklisting:

01. One Of These Days (5:19)
02. Big Love (4:39)
03. Will You Love Me (4:22)
04. Gone Away (6:54)
05. Steady Pace (4:15)
06. Hot Toddies (5:40)
07. Brazos (9:53)

When it was released in the US last year, the praise that greeted Matthew E White's debut album was tinged with a degree of shock. To suggest that the 29-year-old appeared out of nowhere is to risk an online comments section chiding your ignorance – "Where have you been if you haven't heard of psychedelic country-rockers the Great White Jenkins and improvisatory jazz octet Fight the Big Bull? Call yourself a rock critic?" Still, it's fair to say his previous work slipped largely under the radar of anyone not paying very close attention to the Richmond, Virginia indie scene: his most high-profile gig to date was as arranger on Transcendental Youth, the last album by the Mountain Goats. In a world of rock and pop where surprises are seldom sprung – where things progress at an internet-forced pace, so new artists start getting written about before they've released anything, and debut albums are greeted with ennui by an audience that have already had their fill before the main course arrives – there's something striking about someone who arrives, without much in the way of fanfare, not merely with a great album, but a grand idea.

Big Inner was the first release from Richmond's Spacebomb, an attempt to create something roughly analogous to Stax or Motown or Philadelphia International, a label-cum-studio with a sound defined by a house band that perform on all their releases, with White and three friends in the MFSB/Funk Brothers role. It's an idea that's long been out of fashion, which is odd considering how venerated many of the records made in that way by those companies are. Perhaps the feeling is that it smacks of the evil monolithic record company stifling the creativity of the true artist, still a bugbear despite compelling evidence to suggest that when your average alt-rock band negotiates a contract with complete artistic freedom, they then exercise that freedom to sound as much like every other alt-rock band as possible.

http://dickthespic.org/