Beginning by Matthew Fowler

(via r/folk and slowcoustic)

Outside of music and thrifting mid-century modern decor, Reddit is probably the other big facet that my life revolves around. Last night, I subscribed to r/folk and r/indiefolk for the first time. I can already tell these will be frequent stops for me. As I was scrolling through the latest submissions, about a hundred threads down, I noticed a post from an artist himself. Personally, I'm a huge advocate for more artists promoting their music via Reddit. However, a lot of the time, these sort of posts go unnoticed.

That wasn't the case with Matthew Fowler and his album Beginning. The Redditors of r/folk embraced this album with open arms and warm reviews. I concur entirely with just about every comment in that thread.

Blankets and Beginners are what I consider to be the real high points. Blankets astonishes me with the lyrics alone: "I ache to venture out and join to circus/ of people learning how to feel alive". The trumpet seems to be a recurring instrument in the folk songs I've been listening to lately, and I absolutely love its incorporation here. While the trumpet doesn't showcase in Beginners, the melodica ties the song together. I find myself yearning for the vocal-less downtime in this song, just to hear Sam Coplin work his magic on the instrument. The vocals do have a strong showing here as well -- partially due to Fowler's raspy, emotionally-heavy voice and partially due to the lyrics. It really is such a raw, honest love song. "We are beginners, you and I" should really be a mantra for love in my life.

While slowcoustic pegs him as similar to Damien Rice, I find close parallels to Ray LaMontagne, David Gray and Alexi Murdoch as well. Basically, I think I'll be emailing my dad a link to Fowler's album. That's a high praise in my book.

You can download Beginning (for free, or pay as you wish) on Fowler's bandcamp page. It'll go perfectly with that cup of chamomile tea on a rainy day. Or, with everyday life.