a friend of mine, Uncle Sinner, introduced me to The Tallest Man on Earth‘s music via this video of him performing “Love is All” on Later with Jools Holland. it’s a gorgeously dark song about love and the chains it can bind us with sometimes. i love that he plays his Gretsch Firebird, pulling bass notes out with urgency. it proves that indie and folk are not necessarily mutually exclusive. his Gretsch has the perfect haunting tone for this song, as well: full and deep, but a tad hollow. it makes me want a Firebird of my own even more.
here’s a great video i found of TMOE covering Jackson Browne, done by the wonderful French La Blogotheque in their Take Away Show series. beautifully shot, this video shows him wandering the Music Inn in the west village like some mad musical genius, finally settling in to play Jackson Browne’s “These Days” on a parlor guitar from the 1800s. take a look…
If you like what you see here, be sure to check out his 2010 releases, The Blues is Sometimes Just a Passing Bird EP and The Wild Hunt.
Related articles
- Artist of the Day: The Tallest Man on Earth (verbavine.wordpress.com)
- First Aid Kit (dickthespic.org)
- The Tallest Man on Earth (yougottasmile.wordpress.com)
I hear “Love Is All” as a song from the point of view of a man who kills his wife/lover to collect on the estate–he wasn’t a beneficiary in her will, so he throws the will in the river along with the wife/lover. (But maybe that’s too literal/legalistic)
hmm… that *is* a very literal/legalistic way of looking at it… i never would have gone for noun when he says “will”. funny how perspective can be…
i interpret it as a man who is feeling trapped in a relationship. though he loves his partner, he’s come to resent her and her dependency on him. he once thought he could be the person he wanted/needed to be from within the relationship, but that isn’t the case anymore…
he dreams of leaving, of having the strength to end the relationship, but can’t. his building resentment and self-loathing leads him to a place where he needs to feel emotionally in control, but can only do so by feeding on the power dynamics in the relationship. super dark, though, i suppose not as much so as drowning your lover in the river!