Matt Elliott - “This Is For”

Britain’s Matt Elliott is certainly a unique musical figure. Since 1996, he’s been recording twisted electronic music under the guise The Third Eye Foundation, yielding interesting results with records like his breakout album Ghost from 1997. He’s kept himself busy producing new Third Eye Foundation records since then, but ever since 2003, Elliott has also been working in a very different musical format, producing slow, minimalist folk music under his own name. 

With his new solo record The Broken Man, Elliott has crafted his most haunting album yet. Using a full-bodied classical guitar as the primary framework for the record’s seven songs, Elliott unravels tales of misery and lost love, with simple but effective lyrical imagery and a deadpan vocal delivery. As he sings in his rich baritone voice, barely raising it above speaking level, he sounds as though he’s breathing right into the listener’s ear, enforcing the effectiveness of his lyrics. 

On the creeping album highlight “This Is For,” Elliott uses this minimalist framework to great effect, layering guitar tracks, backing vocals, and ethereal ambient noises to create a powerful crescendo towards the end of the track. “This is for the pain that’s yet to come,” he sings, before coldly lamenting the “bruises that [he and an unnamed former lover] shared,” in a powerful turn of phrase. Elliott may still have pain to come, but it’s clear from songs like this one that he’s already experienced quite a share of it. Thankfully, like many great songwriters before him, Elliott’s ability to transmute that suffering into great music is nearly profound. It’s been done before of course, but I’ve never heard it done quite like this.