For nearly twenty years, Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson has played his way around the world as The Tallest Man on Earth, carving out a singular place in contemporary folk music. But his new album Just Beyond Endless Mountain – out October 9th on Anti- Records with a stunning cover portrait by legendary photographer Anton Corbijn – quietly turns that perspective on its head. After returning to his native Dalarna in central Sweden a few years ago, Matsson found himself listening to the music he had spent years trying to leave behind: the polskas, the old field recordings and the sounds of the local traditions that had surrounded him since childhood. The result is not a return to the past, but a step into new musical territory. Swedish folk music has reshaped his melodies, his voice, and the way he writes songs.
About halfway through the record, driving guitar & propulsive drumming provide the backdrop for the new single out today, ‘Deliver Me from Trying’, as distorted vocals reveal a message of longing to let go. “When I listened back to it, I thought, ‘Yeah… okay. Good job, Kristian. You didn’t really know what you were doing there.’ Deliver Me from Trying—just let me stop trying. That line just appeared, and it wasn’t until later that I realized what it meant. It says a lot about where I was at.”
Filmed in the Swedish countryside among the region’s beautiful flora and fauna, listen and watch the song’s new video below.
Dalarna is the place Swedes return to, again and again, to reconnect with their past, for better and for worse. This is where Matsson grew up during the 1980s and ’90s, surrounded by fiddlers and folk dancers, timber cabins and flower-clad Midsummer poles. You learned the dances in school, the music too, and every national holiday was celebrated with folk musicians, traditional dress, and the folk games that had been passed down for generations. It is as if the landscape itself had internalized the nation’s longing for some primordial refuge—a place to retreat whenever modernity had gone too far and, in the process, taken its own people hostage.
Matsson, however, refused to be captured so easily. He started indie bands, hurled himself across the stage like Iggy Pop, and spent his winters snowboarding. His teenage love of unruly rock gave way to an obsession with American blues and folk music. Then came the breakthrough: extensive tours, festival stages, steadily growing audiences, increasingly ambitious recordings, the move to America, and the constant pendulum swing between performing alone and wanting a full band beside him, both onstage and in the studio. Twenty wild years have passed since he released his first EP.
But something changed when he finally stopped moving. A new chapter began. Dalarna became home in the truest sense. Matsson’s farm became his fortress, and the home studio, that had sometimes stood silent, once again became a place where inspiration could rush in—and where freedom opened new windows. He started a garden, bought shares in a few horses, and picked up an ATV to clear the snow from his driveway. And then he bought even more instruments. The fiddle — an instrument he’d had a complicated relationship with since childhood — found its way back into his life. He picked it up hesitantly but soon became obsessed. Now, he opens his concerts with a polska by Pål Olle of Östbjörka.
“Somewhere along the way I’d developed this immature aversion to the whole cultural inheritance I grew up with,” Matsson explains. “But now I live here again. I’ve read an incredible amount—not just about the music, but about how people actually lived in the old days. I think that’s part of why this record feels more like me than anything I’ve made before. This album really comes from somewhere.”
Praise for The Tallest Man On Earth
“Matsson has made some of the best and most-compelling folk songs of the 21st century.” – Paste
“If there’s even a tiny part of you that desires to connect with a less ironic, and maybe even less cynical, version of yourself, the Tallest Man on Earth can help get you there.” – GQ
“Matsson is a guitar-slinger rooted in folk, and his songs are troubadour ballads at heart, carrying knotty, imagistic verses” — The New York Times
The Tallest Man on Earth
Just Beyond Endless Mountain
1. The Wildest of His Dreams
2. Colors
3. We Got The Pony
4. Scully, It’s Me
5. Just Beyond Endless Mountain
6. Overboda
7. Deliver Me From Trying
8. Times
9. The Forest Keeper
10. In The Silver Wire Up The Hill
11. The Village
