Green Fury
In the same way that good architecture seems to grow out of a space rather than to impose upon it, the music on Matt Pond PA's third full-length album has a natural quality that makes its beautiful songs sound more like received truth than a series of parts and arrangements created by the Philadelphia-based Matt Pond. In each ofThe Green Fury's 13 tracks, Pond's lyrics fill a ghostly narrative with pointillist daubs of emotion, creating a dreamy series of images that at times recalls Peter Gabriel's albums from the early MTV era, and at other times resolve into lush, rolling soundscapes. Pond's melancholy vocals lead 12 other instruments, veering from soothing and lullaby-like to soulful and urgent from one song to the next. While a few songs become unintentionally heavy, with melodies and rhythms seeming simplified to accommodate underutilized strings and horns, even this weightiness has a natural place in the range of introspective moods so artfully captured here.--Sarah A. Sternau