Matthew Ryan Opening for Tift Merritt Tonight at the Duck Room

By Annie Zaleski Thu., Sep. 11 2008 at 2:00 PM

Earlier this year, singer-songwriter Matthew Ryan released a fantastic CD called Matthew Ryan vs. the Silver State. Roy Kasten had this to say in advance of Ryan's show here in June:

When last we heard from Matthew Ryan, he was getting in touch with his inner Eno, electro-soundscaping the peripatetic songs he writes in his own blood and sings like he's half-choking on same. If From a Late Night High Rise is his most difficult record, a middle finger to his Nashville outsider reputation, his latest album, Matthew Ryan vs. the Silver State, is the live-sounding, collaborative work of a band. It's a hell of a band, one that swings like the Waterboys and churns like the Blue Nile while bringing it all back to a foreclosed and fuzzed-out Dylanesque home. And only a writer of Ryan's vision would, in a season of permanent war, turn "Dulce Et Decorum Est" into a song of purely personal, purely brilliant ravages. He remains an essential American voice.

He's opening for Tift Merritt tonight at the Duck Room. In the meantime, here's an MP3 of "Dulce Et Decorum Est" and a stream of a new song called "Some Streets Lead Nowhere."

MP3: Matthew Ryan, "Some Streets Lead Nowhere" (stream)

MP3: Matthew Ryan, "Dulce Et Decorum Est"