Phil's Music

Your Ears Will Bleed Sweet Honey

Phil's musical prowess can be felt in the beat of Finding a New Way-the Old Way, an album by Wes Mattheu & the New Way Down.
Here I've included a couple of teaser clips from my favorites on the album. If you like what you hear you should BUY THE CD by sending an email request on their MySpace page. If you don't have or want a MySpace account This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and I'll see what I can do.
You MUST play the YouTube videos.  That's our boy Phil and Wes earning their keep in their real day jobs in the video for I-95 -  and watch out for the impressive lazerboners!
Sinus Infection (audio clip)

Paper Cut (audio clip)

I-95

Beer Yip

WesMattheus-NWDThis is a great review of the album:

From a warehouse in Kensington comes the old-fashioned bluegrass glory of Wes Mattheu & the New Way Down, a ramshackle troupe based around the emotionally acute songwriting and charismatic voice of its fearless leader. The band's been evolving for a decade now, and on the bushy-tailed new album Finding a New Way-the Old Way, the whole damn thing comes together better than ever before. There's saloon-style piano, thumping upright bass, mountain-borne fiddle and mandolin and other timeless touches that deserve to land these guys a gig on A Prarie Home Companion.
As agile and souldful as the instrumentation is, the album's heart and soul is Mattheu, whose playfully adaptive singing is part throaty defiance and part quaking vulnerability. At times he recalls Will Oldham's All Most Heaven EP with Rian Murphy, where ragged country roots similarly collided with quirky pop sensibilities and sterling lyrics. Mattheu crafts a tale of workplace malaise spilling into his personal life on "Snooze" and ably plants the phrase "Knock the cobwebs away" amongst the drowsy horns and piano of "Blueblockers."
The album opens with the locally set "I-95," a modest hoedown packing nods to booze, work (again) and "goddamn cell phones" and "shitty radio stations." A country mouse embedded in the city, Mattheus finds a lot to sing about, railing againsed the trappings of modern life while keeping things upbeat and fun. He's especially sweet on the ode to marriage that is "In the Valley," an dthe standoud "Sinus Infection" kicks off with this tangled wordplay: "Between this sinus infection and this permanent erection, it's hard to win this small-town election."
On the band's MySpace page it says Mattheu "has finally found his family of pickers and crooners." Maybe it's that family vibe that makes Finding a New Way feel so warm and welcoming.


By Doug Wallen.