Matt Litzinger: Gentle Music for the Season

Matt Litzinger, All These Years; Sampler

This is the time of the year for things sweet and gentle, and New Hampshire's Matt Litzinger is just the guy to deliver. He even has a deal for you: download his new EP All These Years and you can also get a free sampler.

Litzinger fits snugly in the singer songwriter folk tradition. He's not going to dazzle you with all manner of studio bling. Check out "Time Turner" from the sampler. He recorded it live because it conveys the personal and warm immediacy of his lyrics and performance style. Many of his songs are unabashedly wholesome. "Chelue," for instance, is told from the POV of his grandfather and the life he built. It is a three-generation tale of a boy and a girl (Chelue) who fell in love early, married, and watched their kids and grandkids grow. Litzinger sings this one with a bit of a rasp reminiscent of how John Prine might attack such material. He celebrates the same kind of devotion in "Piper's Song," which is dedicated to his daughter. This little piano/guitar based melody with its theme of a sunbeam bringing light into an often dark world could come off as mawkish, were it not for the fragile sincerity which Litzinger conveys his feelings.

If ambiguity is your taste, try "Airport Song." It's about a man driving his love to the airport and neither of them has anything to say. This part of the song is melancholy and slower than when he tells us he's counting the days until "she'll be back in my arms." There's just enough doubt in all of this for us to imagine a happy ending, or to think that the song is about a flame that has died out and the reunion is just wishful thinking. Another in the vein of how do you want to spin it is "City Folks." It tells of a person who rides commuter rail to work and dreams of being able to fit seamlessly into city life, though he doesn't. It's mostly a grass-is-greener tale, but it could also be read as a paean to country living.

However you want to think of these songs, you'll find Litzinger's pacing unhurried, his songs calming, his approach unpretentious, and his melodies the type that stick in your head. This is curl up-to-cocoa folk music that lifts the spirit.

Rob Weir