Scott Matthews - Restless Lullabies (Album Review)
For bands and singer-songwriters, 2020 was hardly the best year to release a new album. And let’s face it, 2021 wasn’t much better. The only hope for artists with new music was that they could somehow connect online, as reaching fans via physical touring was out of the question. As a result, countless records were overlooked, under-noticed and sailed away, unloved. Scott Matthews released his eighth album, the sonically ambitious New Skin, in December 2020, at the start of a winter most of us are keen to forget. Three years later, Restless Lullabies sees the same set of songs reborn, and, in an effort to ensure that each are properly heard, they have been stripped of skin, flesh and - in some cases - their very bones, in his most exposed and intimate record to date.
This doesn’t take anything away from the achievements of New Skin, which is bold and enchanting in completely different ways, drenched in electronica and fever-dream atmospherics. Restless Lullabies is altogether more stark, with the sparest of acoustic accompaniments allowing Matthews’ arresting vocal simply to soar. Often compared to Thom Yorke and Jeff Buckley, Scott’s devastating falsetto may lack the chaos of either man but trumps both for focus and restraint. For some this might mean less exciting; for me it just means better. So lightly adorned and so inescapably central is Scott’s voice here, listening to this record is like mainlining pure emotion.
If rebirth is the brief, then it's fitting that ‘New Skin’ opens the record with a vocal creeping in unsteadily against delicate acoustic guitar, before the track blossoms into a murmuration-like climax. Its themes of unchartered territory set the scene. By contrast, ‘Wait In The Car’ is more static and musically grounded, its roomy piano affording Matthews’ lower register a turn as it reveals a bittersweet carpe diem. In any gear, it’s a voice that can stir or still the listener by turns.
Throughout the record, it's fascinating to hear how Matthews uses a minimal toolkit to reflect a song’s essence: a fingerpicked ukulele is the teeming rain of ‘Morning’, while ‘The Tide’ shimmers with spare percussion as its waters undulate with flushed chords and gently heaving backing vocals. Later, the reverb is set to ‘small, dark church’ for the haunting a cappella of ‘Intruders On Earth’, which evokes the surreal silence of a night spent snow-walking. It’s arguably the album’s most powerful piece: no tools required, then.
If you’re looking for anything resembling a hit then it’s probably the wonderful ‘My Selfless Moon’ or the hypnotic yet singalong ‘Autopilot’, but I don’t think takeaway tracks are the point. Why run the bath if you’re only going to dip a toe in? Restless Lullabies is really a record in which to immerse yourself end to end. It’s one of those sit-in-the-dark LPs. Find yourself an empty room and let this record fill it with its satisfying hollows and deep, melancholic beauty.
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Review by Rich Barnard
As a venue, The Union Chapel rises serenely above the sticky floors of its close neighbours The Hope & Anchor and The Garage. It balances its roles as fully functioning church and celebrated concert hall with ease and, if you’re after a sense of reverence and ceremony, there aren’t many London venues that can match it. On this balmy May evening, Scott Matthews' disciples gather respectfully along the ridiculously up-at-heel Compton Terrace long before doors open and I have the distinct impression that I am in for one of the more civilised gig-going experiences of my modest career. I install myself in pew 77 with a Coke (no alcohol allowed in the church itself) and begin to contemplate my manifold sins.