The Sub Rooms

Wed 22 Nov 2023

Scott Matthews

Music
Scott Matthews

  • Doors: 18:30

  • Start Time: 19:30

  • Date: Wed 22 Nov 2023

  • Price: £20.00

  • Seated
  1. Home
  2. /
  3. whats on
  4. /
  5. scott matthews

“His music has a glorious atmosphere”

Bob Harris, BBC Radio 2

“Another beautiful piece of workit feels timeless…existing outside any genre, which is a beautiful thing… absolutely wonderful” 

Ed O’Brien, Radiohead (on Restless Lullabies)

Scott Matthews’ ground-breaking debut album, Passing Stranger earned him serious critical acclaim with its bold mix of folk, rock, blues and Eastern-inspired song-writing, and in 2007 his first single ‘Elusive’ won the Ivor Novello Award for ‘Best Song Musically and Lyrically’. From here Scott went on to perform on a number of international sell-out tours with respected artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Bert Jansch, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Foo Fighters, Snow Patrol and Tori Amos.

Following Scott Matthews’ critically acclaimed album, New Skin, lauded by Robert Plant, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Bella Union’s Simon Raymonde as his most courageous move yet in its Eno-esque electronica and Thom Yorke-centric uncovering, comes the sequel to its story, and the Ivor Novello award-winner is not afraid to evolve once more. From within this freshly paved electronic landscape, Matthews’ new album, Restless Lullabies, emerges with a stark boldness that is breath taking. These phoenix songs, born from New Skin, have more to give, worthy of reincarnation, entirely reimagined by Matthews who appears dauntless, they are restless with good reason.

Now entirely unadorned, stripped of their electronic veil, the album’s organic, acoustic purity creates a subliminal listening experience. From the ethereal acapella, ‘Intruders on Earth’, to the evocative duet, ‘Anniversary’, where Matthews performs with American soul-jazz singer, Krystle Warren, the result being a vocal fusion that seems impossibly perfect. The skeletal delicacy of the songs allows his poetry to breathe, his transcendent vocal to soar, brings his dexterously sensitive guitar playing into microscopic focus and further cements his undeniable mastery as one of our greatest songsmiths. Restless Lullabies is the Yin to New Skin’s Yang, so obviously interconnected and yet somehow possessing an entirely different force. Here, once again, Scott Matthews has given us a portal to his very core.

With support from Natalie Holmes

Legendary local singer-songwriter Natalie Holmes returns again to the Sub Rooms!