Mattis & The Grand Trunk Road Ensemble

live at Punkt Festival 2009:

Concert review by John Kelman

Myrland, a singer/songwriter with a distinctive predilection for late-1960s and earl-1970s American singer/songwriters including Leonard Cohen and Crosby, Stills & Nash, opened the evening with a set of appealing original music, focusing on the his own unaffected but clearly affecting voice, and those of banjoist/vocalist Hans Martin Austestad and harmonium player/vocalist Wenche Losnegård. With a sextet also including drummer/sampler Freddy Wike, bassist/baritone guitarist Jo Berger Myhre and guitarist Jan Martin Smørdal, there was plenty of available instrumentation to deliver music ranging from acoustic and sweet to electric and hard-edged.

Curious samples of even richer vocal harmonies, in addition to more jagged textures, sometimes underscored a group sound that was, at times, spare and ethereal, but elsewhere became dense and propulsive. Myrland's direct yet poetic bent was well supported, most notably by Smørdal, who added a touch of Bill Frisell-like idiosyncrasy to the music, with distinctive voicings and resonant, sustaining chords that oscillated in and around the music. Avoiding the prerequisite rhytm section sound, Myhre's baritone guitar work often took center stage instrumentally, even as Myrland's grungy, distorted acoustic guitar sounded more garage band than folk troubadour; still, in a strange way the group's confluence of seemingly disparate and incongrous textures came together in an attractive fashion and worked.

Read the whole article here (including a great review of Navyelectre)