About this Event
Matt Malone is a singer/songwriter born in the goldfields region of country Victoria. He has formed his musical vision out of the blues, country, folk and gospel traditions of the American, British and Australian past.
Malone’s commanding baritone and masterfully crafted songs have been compared to the archetypal Johnny Cash, gospel preachers like Blind Willie Johnson / Reverend Gary Davis, poetic folk troubadours including Leonard Cohen / Bob Dylan and tenebrous lyrical princes Nick Cave / Michael Gira.
After releasing his critically acclaimed LP - For The Term Of My Natural Life through VRS Records (Vinyl - CD - Digital), Malone has picked up the electric guitar and invoked The Holy Spirits skeleton crew (Anthony Cornish / drums, Ash Jones / violin) to cover some of his fave artists / songs from PJ Harvey, John Lee Hooker, Bob Dylan, Paul Kelly and Lou Reed in a primitive blues style. A record set to be another classic of the Melbourne / Australian underground.
Press:
'★★★★’
- Sydney Morning Herald
'★★★★’
- Backseat Mafia
"Matt Malone & The Holy Spirits channel the darkness, the shadows... you'll recognise some Bad Seeds vibes in here and I'm all for it."
- Henry Wagons, Double J
"Malone mines life's dark shadows in a similar way to Nick Cave or foreign antecedents like Merle Haggard and Bob Dylan. It's an album of singular vision, unrelenting in its intensity..."
- Rhythms Magazine
"Matt Malone & The Holy Spirits sound like a Ennio Morricone score for a Cormac McCarthy movie.”
- Americana UK
"Ultimately (For The Term Of My Natural Life) signposts Malone’s redemption, and through the darkness a sense of resolute optimism emerges, for this life and beyond."
- Post To Wire
“Matt Malone, along with his band The Holy Spirits, bleeds pain, anguish and sorrow from every note in his new album ‘For The Term Of My Natural Life’, and every track cuts with a visceral knife. And yet wallowing in such a dark shadowy world is utterly cathartic and immensely enjoyable… The instrumentation is precise and sharp – emotional, scything and eloquent and as poetic and dark as the vocals and the lyrics… The result is something that is incredibly vivid and expressive.”
- Backseat Mafia
“(For The Term Of My Natural Life) is a musing on destiny and the inescapability of certain circumstances in life, an Australian gothic take on faith and identity, and while the narrator seems resigned to his fate the refrain is repeated with a certain determination that suggests he may break free."
- Sunset Country Music
"Matt Malone has a voice similar to Nick Cave & Tex Perkins, in a gothic-blues… outlaw country style"
- Cosmic Country Bob, 104.7FM
‘Whatever juju, alchemy or disturbed darkness that made Jim Morrison put on a pair of leather trousers & shock the world out of its apathy… Matt has got it!’
- Kim Salmon (The Scientists, Beasts Of Bourbon, The Surrealists)
'(Matt Malone & The Holy Spirits) are stripped and bare in the outlaw country tradition, but with the menace and slow stabbing guitar of a Rowland S. Howard Special.'
- Samuel Fell (Rolling Stone)
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Lomond Hotel, 225 Nicholson Street, Brunswick East, Australia
AUD 0.00 to AUD 25.00
