MATTSON 2
Premieres New Song "Naima's Dream"
New Album Paradise Out June 7 On Company Records
On Tour Now
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Photo credit: Andrew Paynter
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"Their crystalline, melodic surf-psych sound conjures up greener pastures and sunny days." -
KCRW
"Their music is modal, spacious, hypnotic, instrumental, and oozes the laid-back, endless summer vibe of those beach towns south of L.A.... A potpourri of sonic colors and trance-inducing grooves." - Premier Guitar
"Their work blends jazz fusion, psychedelia, and a surprising element of surf music, allowing them to appeal to jazz fans and jam-band hippies alike." - Stereogum
"Telepathic chemistry - effortlessly and mesmerizingly in-sync." - Aquarium Drunkard
Mattson 2, the jazz duo of identical twins Jared and Jonathan Mattson, will release their new album Paradise on June 7 on Company Records, and today they share a new song, the kaleidoscopic instrumental track "Naima's Dream." Brooklyn Vegan, who premiered the song today, writes, "'Naima's Dream'... brings warm, mellow vibes and nods toward Chuck Mangione without using any horns.
Paradise is out June 7 on Company Records and also includes the previously released track "Essence." The album is available for pre-order HERE.
Mattson 2 is currently on a North American tour that includes festival plays at Vermont's Waking Windows, Ohio's Nelsonville Music Festival, and Colorado's Telluride Jazz Festival, SFJAZZ Festival, and dates opening for Nick Waterhouse. All dates are below.
Mattson 2 on Tour
5/03: Waking Windows - Winooski, VT
5/04: Basin Springs Park - Eureka Springs, AR
5/06: 7th Street Entry - Minneapolis, MN *
5/07: The Ivy House - Milwaukee, WI
5/08: Lincoln Hall - Chicago, IL *
5/09: Shelter - Detroit, MI *
5/13: Brighton Music Hall - Boston, MA *
5/14: Music Hall of Williamsburg - Brooklyn, NY *
5/15: American Bar & Grill - Lancaster, PA
5/16: The Foundry - Philadelphia, PA *
5/17: Rock & Roll Hotel - Washington, DC *
5/18: Southern Cafe & Music Hall - Charlottesville, VA *
5/19: Ambrose West - Asheville, NC
5/20: Terminal West - Atlanta, GA *
5/21: One Eyed Jacks - New Orleans, LA *
5/23: Bronze Peacock - Houston, TX *
5/24: The Parish - Austin, TX *
5/25: Dada - Dallas, TX *
6/08-09: Nelsonville Music Festival - Nelsonville, OH
6/14: SFJAZZ Center - San Francisco, CA
6/19: Cellar Door - Visalia, CA
6/20: Belly Up - San Diego, CA
6/21: Lodge Room - Los Angeles, CA
8/09-10: Telluride Jazz Festival - Telluride, CO
* w/ Nick Waterhouse
MORE ON PARADISE:
When things are right, they're right; it's rare that everything falls into place. It's rarer still to capture that feeling on wax, which is what The Mattson 2 have achieved with their latest album, Paradise. It's their second release on Chaz Bear's (fka Chaz Bundick, aka Toro y Moi) Company Records, and first without Bear as a member of the band. The identical twins, Jared (guitars) and Jonathan (drums), have left their trademark virtuosity on display; within the 32-minute runtime they've managed to capture the arc of an entire relationship between two people. You can tell from how warm the guitars sound - we go from emotional equilibrium to longing to happiness to loss. "For years and years you've been on my mind," they sing, and mean it. When the Mattsons sing the line "you're so special, you're so easy" it's easy to forget they're not talking to you.
Even so, it's a record to throw a frisbee to - it's a sylphlike, sylvan thing, meant to be used and enjoyed. "We don't want people to think too hard," they say. "We want to let people in!" That's perhaps because it's the first album they've written and recorded in their home, which is a wooden cabin in the hills of San Diego. You can hear the sun in the keyboards, in the 80s-inflected jazz. The singing is new, too. What it adds up to is a bigger, bolder sound than their previous work; the brothers say they went into it trying out a conceptually new, cohesive sound - a new sonic palette to create from. It's a little bit of summer you can savor all year long.
They've been playing shows for 15 years without any vocals; on Paradise, though, the twins have added their voices to the mix, which adds a welcome new human dimension to the record. "No matter how much someone loved the instrumental set they'd ask if we sang!" Jared said. Even so, the lyrics are meant to be abstract, to conjure a mood. If you listen closely you'll be able to discern what the Mattson brothers are feeling. There's longing, in songs that are about getting what you want and realizing it's not actually the right thing; there's lyrics about not being free, in both the capitalist system and in the creative one. There's a song about a loved one dying from an overdose. There are deep themes here, even if the subjects are treated lightly.
On "Naima's Dream," which opens the album, the Mattsons lock into a buoyant melody; it sounds like the feeling of lying in a park on a carefree, sunny day, watching the dogs chase the people throwing frisbees in the distance. That feeling carries through the rest of the album, too; on "Essence," which describes a relationship in progress. "You're so special, you're so easy," the Mattsons sing over a lush guitar arrangement propelled by a truly grooving bass line.
The range of human experience is vast, and the Mattsons have managed to capture a piece of it in stunning detail. Being alive demands every kind of adjective: difficult, boring, fun, sustaining, affirming, renewing, reviving, strenuous, punishing, arbitrary, unfeeling, inconvenient, and everything in between. The slice that the Mattsons describe in this album is uniformly sweet, but inflected with the knowledge of how quickly things can change, and how, most of the time, it's hard to recognize that they're changing until the metamorphosis is already complete.
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