The Tallest Man on Earth

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. His discography has long been heard through the lens of the American folk tradition. But Just Beyond Endless Mountain, out October 9th on Anti- Records, quietly turns that perspective on its head. After returning to his native Dalarna in central Sweden, 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.

Dalarna is the place Swedes return to, again and again, to reconnect with their past, for better and for worse. This is where Kristian Matsson grew up during the 1980s and '90s, surrounded by fiddlers and folk dancers, timber cabins and flower-clad Midsummer poles. It was a culture you absorbed whether you wanted to or not. 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. 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.

Kristian, however, refused to be captured so easily. He started indie bands, hurled himself across the stage like Iggy Pop, and spent his winters snowboarding instead. Then Bob Dylan opened a window, and Matsson traced the music back to its source — to the scratchy field recordings Dylan himself had drawn from at the beginning of it all. Another tradition set Matsson free, though perhaps, in the end, it was the same tradition wearing different clothes.