Matthew Davis
Let’s Drown Each Other
Sergio Leone
Funeral Hits
When Matthew Davis died in his sleep of an aneurysm in 2003, the loss to Iowa City was larger than the death of one man. His band Ten Grand — so named because, as rumor has it, a more affluent musical group paid them an undisclosed amount to give up their former name Vidablue — was on the verge of becoming a big thing outside our small pond after triumphant tours of the U.S. and Europe. Known for the depth of their songwriting and the overwhelming intensity of their live performances, Davis’ death left a hole that hasn’t been filled.
Davis wasn’t just a singer in a band: He was a musician for whom musical creation was a relentless obsession. His brother Dan Davis has recently released these two EPs of Davis’ solo work on Bandcamp, the proceeds of which will go towards pressing a double vinyl album of his solo work to be released next fall.
Let’s Drown Each Other collects some demos Davis recorded in his basement, presumably intended for eventual full band arrangements. These are songs of bereft heartbreak, made clear by the song titles: “You Broke Everything I Own,” “How Can I Breath When You’re Here?” and “Shut Up When I’m Talking to You.” The epic miserableness of the lyrics is leavened by the meditative beauty of the songs; even in the midst of dark emotion the music hints at a way out. His voice, usually heard swooping and howling in a sea of noise at a Ten Grand show, is as delicate and damaged as Neil Young’s. Every crack, waver and note not quite reached is in service of the song’s meaning. His strummed guitar playing is only simple on the surface. His alternate tunings build an original set of chord voicings for each song.
Funeral Hits is from Davis and Molly Freeman’s experimental ambient project, Sergio Leone. Found sounds recorded from television and other unidentifiable sources weave in and out of a bricolage of fragmented movie soundtrack music and Davis’ Eno-esque guitar and keyboard landscapes. The morbid album name contrasts with absurd song titles like “Dick Tracy vs. Flattop” and “Your Mom Is A Broken Record.”
The world hardly needs another album like Funeral Hits, either in 2002 or now. Thousands of people perform this kind of experiment, and, as it is in scientific research, the results are mostly negative. But very few experimenters have Davis’ lush musical imagination. Embedded in the sonic masala of Sergio Leone are delicate, finely-worked song fragments that Davis pulled out of the air to fit the cut and paste ambience.
When someone dies, their transgressions, disappointments and petty infractions fade in people’s memory. Their accomplishments are magnified and polished. Matt Davis needs no such elegiac nostalgia to burnish his reputation. The music he created was original, emotional and as fresh now as when he first made it.
