Escape From L.A.: Vinyl LP
ST71Pre-Order Item. Release Date Subject to Change.
Label: Scissor Tail Editions
Release Date: 12th December
Feels like Matt Kivel has walked a classically 21st Century indie path from being in a buzzed about electronic-indie-likely-featured-heavily-on-hypemachine-blogs band Princeton, to being jaded and burned out by the relentlessness of it all, to retreating to making new age folk and ambient records, collaborating with some of the most lauded songwriters Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Alasdair Roberts, Madi Diaz, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Jana Horn, and Satomimagae. And all the while moving from the pop music capital of his home LA, to the leftfield artist's haven of Austin, Texas and then onwards to New York. On 'Escape From LA' Kivel takes an autobiographical look on the first 33 years of his life in the City of Angels, with a folk sound that has a free and easy country lilt, that soft soulful pop of the 60s and a blend of storytelling with infectious earworms that recall Cass McCombs and Kurt Vile. This record is gorgeous and I've written far too much for a simple sales blurb.
Kurt Vile once sang that he had a freeway in mind, but Matt Kivel (Vile’s former Woodsist labelmate) literally has a freeway mind. Kivel grew up in Santa Monica, California, getting shuttled up and down the 10, the 101, PCH, and all the other freeways Angelenos lovingly affix definite articles to. He started out in music as part of the buzzy, Eagle Rock-based indie band Princeton, toured the country relentlessly, burned out, and then resurfaced with a series of bleak, hauntingly spare solo albums that garnered widespread critical acclaim.
Over the ensuing decade, Kivel collaborated closely with a growing set of brilliant, and varied musicians from across the globe, including Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Alasdair Roberts, Madi Diaz, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Jana Horn, and Satomimagae. He moved to Austin, Texas then left for New York City for a spell and then returned to Austin where he settled down. In 2017, he started writing the songs for what would become his eighth solo album, Escape From L.A.
Escape From L.A. is an autobiographical song cycle that chronicles the first thirty-three years of Kivel’s life in the City of Angels. The material was labored over, rewritten, rearranged, and rerecorded numerous times, between LA, New York, and Austin. Kivel self-effacingly refers to it as his “bootleg as hell Blood On The Tracks” with myriad alternate sequences, tempos and arrangements that will never see the light of day. It involved over twenty collaborators, a string section, pedal steel guitars, and a renewed lyrical and vocal clarity that allows the narrative vignettes to unspool in vivid detail. It’s a beautiful, grounded statement and one of Kivel’s best.