Dear Lover

Matthew Ryan | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 16, 2010)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: dearj
• ASIN: B002STRAC2
• Also Available in: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,400 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. City Life

2. Dear Lover

3. Some Streets Lead Nowhere

4. We Are Snowmen

5. Your Museum

6. PS

7. The Wilderness

8. Spark

9. The World Is...

10. The End of a Ghost Story

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Matthew Ryan swings for the fence, February 20, 2010

By 

Garbageman (the other side of California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dear Lover (Audio CD)

Wow. This album is very simple, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's "easy to deal with". After following this guy's career for years, I find this his best work by far and one of the most important albums by an American artist in a very long time. Matthew Ryan opens the 2010 season on the back of 10 powerful and personal songs, ratcheted up to the breaking point and punctuated by shotglassfuls of blaring guitar wails. His trademark scratchy croon gives us no repreive, pleading couplets from a distant but personal place that we're not meant to know about (given his ambiguous liner notes which claim the pieces were precipitated by an ER visit). Meanwhile, the music blasts along, often propelled by dance beats that are alternately hammering and throbbing, making each song a real taxing journey. By the time you reach the track "The World Is...", you're wondering if any music by anyone can aspire to this level of magic. Two remarkable things happen: you don't want the album to end, despite its emotional toll, and when it does, you don't really want to hear anything else for a while.

This is the most important album by an American artist since Sun Kil Moon's "Ghosts Of the Great Highway" and Ryan's best. It sounds almost insincere, but he never was much of a "singer/songwriter" clone anyway. This nails it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just saw this today in USA Today about Dear Lover!, February 16, 2010

By 

Lori - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dear Lover (Audio CD)

"Matthew Ryan, Dear Lover
* * *½ WORDS OFTEN UNSPOKEN

Previously available online, Dear Lover is now in independent record stores -- a great new excuse to discover a writer who pens love songs as tough as Jim Thompson novels. "If this is it for worse or better, I swear you'll have to come get her," Ryan sings, as though trying to stare down death. Some rockers must scream when they plumb emotions at this depth. Ryan rarely has to raise his voice above a raspy whisper. -- Brian Mansfield, USA TODAY"