Matthew Shaw - Ghosts in the Concrete
I have listened to Matthew Shaw's album three times. I am restless, but I want more. I always want more, and as the day slowly sets into the night one more time, I smile and listen to Ghosts in the Concrete one more time.
Dawn breaks and the early morning sun starts to rise in the horizon. I'm sitting in my car after a night of clubbing and swinging from bar to bar. The silence of the morning creeps up from behind and I decide to find comfort in music. I find the dusty jewel case of Matthew Shaw's latest album and from the moment the music starts, I did not have the confidence that this band would inspire me like the other bands I listen to. It was Matthew Shaw's voice, a mixture of Conor Oberst's vocal singing with Ben Gibbard's Postal Service.
Once setting my ears to the tune playing in the background of my daily routine, I decide it is time for me to give Shaw and his Ghosts in the Concrete a chance. Shaw uses a confusing mixture of guitar chords, simple drumbeats, and the much-emphasized Casio keyboard. Just like Gibbard and Oberst, my fingers snap, my head bobs, while my foot taps- and as much as I want these appendages not to, I just cannot help it. There is nothing too difficult to comprehend in this album as the simple lyrics move quickly to the simple music.
Shaw may not be a fan of complicated lyrics and concentrated story telling, but he sure knows how to rhyme a specific word until there are no more words left to use in the rhyming dictionary. Take "Sink in the Sea" for example, where he rhymes every line with "sea;" "…maybe it could set us free from the calculated cities that we see but don't wait for me and my self-destructive tendencies," repeats once more towards the end of the song while the summer day solo of the guitar plays in the background. Perhaps it is a message to all the lovers; perhaps it is a youthful teen angst move towards "freedom." Either way, his poetic simplicity gives Shaw a sense of identity as he slowly progresses towards stardom.
It is mid-day. I have listened to Matthew Shaw's album three times. I am restless, but I want more. I always want more, and as the day slowly sets into the night one more time, I smile and listen to Ghosts in the Concrete one more time.
(Burning Building Recordings)