Matthew Ryan & The Silver State

His best yet, Matthew Ryan vs. The Silver State, has just arrived. The album finds Ryan backed by a simpatico group of Music City vets who imbue his steely tunes with welcome warmth courtesy of several beautiful string and keyboard adornments. The record’s eleven tracks provide an ideal distillation of Ryan’s myriad lyrical personas, the love lorn balladeer (“Jane, I Still Feel the Same”), the empathetic observer of the disaffected (“It Could’ve Been Worse”) and the politically aware social commentator (“American Dirt”). It’s to Ryan’s credit that each pose feels equally real and his ability to seamlessly blend the personal and political remains a strong point. What really separates Ryan from the rest of the pack, though, whether he’s leading his band through a harder edged ’Mats styled rave up like “Drunk and Dissapointed” or going it alone into the dark corners of self doubt on “I Only Want to Be The Man You Want,” is his big, beating heart. His ability to render emotionally wrenching scenes with an economy of language remains unparalleled, as on his portrait of an alienated punk-rock-teen-father-to-be’s apparent suicide (“Some people push ’til a kid goes boom.”).

Listen to "It Could've Been Worse" from Matthew Ryan vs. The Silver State

In a different era Ryan’s high caliber substance-over-style music would likely be playing in large music halls rather than tiny night clubs, but I’ll settle for having him making stirring music in the here and now, secure in the knowledge that posterity will eventually measure him the equal of the musical icons he openly lioniizes (fellow big hearted populists like Paul Westerberg and Joe Strummer). Ryan recently took time out to chat with Reveille about his Irish roots, the perils of “confessional” songwriting and his quest to "quietly encourage people to be their own leading men and women.”

Reveille: I’m talking to you the day before Matthew Ryan vs. The Silver State hits record stores. At this point you’ve been putting out records for more than a decade, is ‘record release day’ still an exciting moment for you or it does it feel like old hat now?

Matthew Ryan: I absolutely still get excited on the day a record gets released. It’s definitely changed though. The notion of making music and having people listen to it and let it be a part of their lives is kind of a romantic thing, I kind of look at the release of this record as my ninth marriage. I’m not cynical, I’m still hopeful and excited, but I know more than I did the first time.

Reveille: I recently read an interesting article positing the existence of a new genre called “inclusion rock.” The main premise of the article was that certain artists make music about every day people and common experiences meant to lift those people up. Some of the musicians the article cited were The Arcade Fire and Bruce Springsteen and I was thinking you would fit into that genre as well. How consciously do you try and write with that sort of populist perspective in mind? I can’t imagine there are too many other songwriter currently who work references to places like Applebees into their songs of anguish [as Ryan does on the track “Drunk & Disappointed”].

Ryan: It’s not something I’m conscious of crafting. Normal everyday people are the kind of people I care about. That song you mentioned, “Drunk & Disappointed,” is about a guy feeling lost and trying to see himself in people on the street and to feel connected to them, but he’s going to some of the wrong places and feeling more and more desperate. I like some music that’s more esoteric, more like playacting. Bowie was always great at that, but there was always still a lot of humanity in what Bowie did. I think as artists we have a job to do, and that’s to connect people.

Watch an intimate home recorded performance of "Jane, I Still Feel the Same"

Reveille: You’ve had periods where you left making music for a living behind and worked regular jobs in a factory and as a teacher. Do you think those experiences changed the way you approached making music once you came back to it?

Ryan: I took a lot away from those experiences. A lot of people don’t realize how heroic they are in their everyday lives. They get kind of caught up in comparing themselves to things that don’t matter. I mean we basically have an entertainment complex over a culture and it sends a million messages a year. Whether you’re talking about politics or entertainment you’re talking about a very small group of people compared to the mass of people actually making everything work and happen on a daily basis. The perception from on high is that there’s simplicity down there, but the reality is that all of those people are complex and born with beliefs that they are examining and reshaping and testing. I didn’t like going to work at a particular time and I didn’t like the pace of it, but I grew to really admire the work ethic it required.

Reveille: The press release for the new album talks about your Irish heritage and although I’m far from a Celtic music expert there appears to be something of the musical stamp of that country cropping up on a few tracks, in particular one of my favorites, “They Were Wrong.” How much was this album influenced by you reflecting on your Irish heritage and its attendant music?

Ryan: I’ve always felt like when my songs were paired down they were in a folk tradition. I loved the music that reached me from Ireland as a child and my family was always very into their Irishness, my heritage was very real stuff for me, I’m two generations removed from Ireland. At the time I was growing up in Philadelphia it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to be Irish, but it wasn’t a good thing either. I remember when U2 broke and the hugeness of it, you’re talking about a boy whose friends couldn’t come over and spend the night because the neighborhood he lived in was considered too rough, and then all of the sudden there was this Irish band just taking over rock ‘n’ roll music. My love of the ’Mats, U2, Leonard Cohen, it all came to me at a point in my life when I was really young and open and searching for something. With some of the more Irish sounding songs on this record I just knew that I wanted it to feel authentic. I had my friend from the Green Cards come in and play a lot of the viola parts, there were a lot of people who could have played them but I knew that he really understood Irish tradition. The record really is a love letter of sorts to Ireland. The Irish condition is sort of knowing things are shit but it’s OK to smile through it. .

Listen to "American Dirt" from Matthew Ryan vs. The Silver State 

Reveille: Since around the time of Regret Over the Wires [released in 2003] you’ve successfully worked political commentary into many of your songs without resorting to banal sloganeering or blunt “Bush sucks” criticism. As a songwriter how do you go about incorporating your political views into your work without it being overwhelmed by them?

Ryan: I think when you’re in your teens and 20s you don’t think politics has anything to do with anything, that it doesn’t affect your dreams, but it does. I don’t feel that I write political songs but as a human being it’s part of my experience. I realize there are no easy answers, there’s no black and white when it’s come to legislation, it’s a horribly complex and daunting thing to understand how things come down from on high. My early records were more talking about personal discomfort, but by 2003 with Regret Over the Wires … I mean ‘patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings’ and all that. That’s a dangerous mentality, particularly in a world economy where there should be implied brotherhood. It’s easy for the average person to lose sight of their own humanity and momentum. All of my songs are trying to engage people in their own lives and the world around them. That kind of idealism may sound a little silly but I don’t care, my goal is to inspire people to try and make things a little better, and I think I’m getting better at it. I still have a great amount of faith and ambition, I think it’s because I have recurrent memory loss (laughs). The successes or failures of prior records don’t mean anything to me. All that matters to me now is trying to reach more people and quietly encouraging them to be their own leading men and women.

Reveille: Even though you employ “I’ a lot in your songs and write about seemingly personal emotional issues I don’t know that I would lump you into the terrain of the confessional singer/songwriter. Do you considered your songwriting confessional in nature?

Ryan: There was a time when I thought I had to be a confessional songwriter but as I’ve matured that’s not where I’m coming from with my music anymore. I think art has its own collective wisdom; we’re not born with it. These stories I tell that may seem buried in the id, my hope is they actually offer some kind of help guiding people through pretty universal experiences. I don’t think I’m unique in feeling awkward and apart from the collective culture at times, I don’t think I’m the only citizen who feels disconnected from their government. When I’m using the word ‘I’ it’s essentially the word ‘we.’ I mean man, the first time I heard [The Replacements 1984 classic] “Unsatisfied,” I felt like I wasn’t alone and there was some hope for the future. The message of that song to me was clearly, ‘well if you’re so unsatisfied then get up off your ass and do something about it.’ I know Westerberg likes to play it down when talking about his songs, but anyone who can write the way he has about children, tenderness, broken hearts, what he’s really doing is encouraging people to rise above the things that could break them down. I’ve been getting braver and willing to take that risk in my own songs. As a person you’re always going to let people down and make mistakes … but to achingly want to be better there’s nothing wrong with that. I think in the times we live in to admit as much is about the most punk rock thing you can say.

Watch this DIY short promoting Matthew Ryan vs. The Silver State featuring several clips from the album