Originally Posted by Gavin B.

The Tallest Man on Earth: Sweden's Dylanesque Bard


The Tallest Man on Earth (Kristian Mattson) is actually of average height

I cringe whenever the critics label an up and coming musician "the next Dylan" because it's usually hypervole, Comparing an up and coming performer to Dylan is usually the kiss of death for the the performer. It really doesn't do a service to the performer to be compared to Dylan because doing so sets an impossibly high set of expectations for the listener. Over the years I've heard "the next Dylan" comparison used to describe "used to be" preformers as P.F. Sloan, Barry McGuire, Bob Lind, Peter Mulvey & Lloyd Cole and look what it did for their careers. Bruce Springsteen was about the only survivor of "the next Dylan" tag and as it turned out, Springsteen turned out to be something very different from Robert Zimmerman.

So I was skeptical when AMG wrote the following about Kristian Mattson, a young Swedish folksinger who performs under the name of The Tallest Man on Earth.

As it turns out AMG's review does a pretty good job of describing Mr. Mattson's talent and it's pretty hard to avoid "the next Dylan" cliche when you listen to the music. Like the early Dylan, Mattson performs without a backup band and he almost seems like an anacronism in the age high tech electonica, but it works in his favor because it gives his music a timeless quality. His brand new album The Wild Hunt is simply the best album I've heard in 2010 and I hope the Tallest Man on Earth survives "the next Dylan" label and keeps making great music own his own terms.