The songs on Legacy are proof that it isn’t the raw materials that define a song, it is more about how the artist fits them together. Give a hundred other country, folk, alt-country …whatever, artists the same clean limbed guitar lines, the same subject matter, the same resonance and rootsy approach and they will probably return something palatable but predictable. Matt Westin fashions something far cleverer than that though.
Whilst on the surface it fits somewhere between the rhinestone glare of Nashville tradition and the more edgy and underground vibe that gets called country rock or alt-country. But really it is just the natural marriage of country music and the rock heritage that it grew up along side.
And musically it is subtle beast, born out of heartache and tragedy and, as the name suggests, a tribute and remembrance to a lost love one but never pulling those heartstrings too obviously. Country music can be about pickup trucks, trains, campfires and national pride, nothing wrong with that, there is a market and a place for everything but Matt Westin reminds us that country music, can also document life in a deeper, more emotive way, a way that is both totally personal and universally relatable.
For Legacy is a collection of songs for the everyday, the working man, the realities of life and its loves, loss, longing but also its beauty and celebration. Never has an ordinary life had a soundtrack so glorious.
[…] Matt Westin has always been great at spinning tales and subtle narratives about the world around him, about the places that he walks through and the people that he meets on those streets. Thin Blue Line, as the name suggests, is a song with so much importance and gravitas, and a tribute to and a depiction of the country’s police forces and the job that they do. […]