Kivel, Matt

Kivel, Matt

Escape from L.A.

Scissor Tail Editions

Kurt Vile once sang that he had a freeway in mind, but Matt Kivel (Vile’s former Woodsist labelmate) literally has a freeway mind. Kivel grew up in Santa Monica, California, getting shuttled up and down the 10, the 101, PCH, and all the other freeways Angelenos lovingly affix definite articles to. He started out in music as part of the buzzy, Eagle Rock-based indie band Princeton, toured the country relentlessly, burned out, and then resurfaced with a series of bleak, hauntingly spare solo albums that garnered widespread critical acclaim.Over the ensuing decade, Kivel collaborated closely with a growing set of brilliant, and varied musicians from across the globe, including Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Alasdair Roberts, Madi Diaz, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, Jana Horn, and Satomimagae. He moved to Austin, Texas then left for New York City for a spell and then returned to Austin where he settled down. In 2017, he started writing the songs for what would become his eighth solo album, Escape From L.A.Escape From L.A. is an autobiographical song cycle that chronicles the first thirty-three years of Kivel’s life in the City of Angels. The material was labored over, rewritten, rearranged, and rerecorded numerous times, between LA, New York, and Austin. Kivel self-effacingly refers to it as his “bootleg as hell Blood On The Tracks” with myriad alternate sequences, tempos and arrangements that will never see the light of day. It involved over twenty collaborators, a string section, pedal steel guitars, and a renewed lyrical and vocal...

Kivel, Matt

Days Of Being Wild

Woodsist

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. Days of Being Wild was recorded over the course of six weeks in the summer of 2013 with Paul Oldham in a small detached shed in Los Angeles. The album art features original drawings by Max Markowitz.  “I had worked with Paul on the last record I did, 2013’s Double Exposure, and I was lucky because he decided to move to LA right after that record was finished. My friend Brian Cosgrove has this house in the Echo Park hills, kind of a punk house where everyone who lives in it plays in bands. It’s got a front porch with a refrigerator on it and it’s got a one room shed in the back where bands rehearse. A lot of bands have rehearsed there over the years. Paul and I started meeting there over the summer and I would buy Paul beer. We drank whiskey on the first day, but I think we both got too drunk to do anything productive—well, at least I did, Paul’s from Kentucky, so he has an even higher threshold—so we switched to beer and things went smoothly from then on. I played most of the instruments, Paul played bass, and my friend David Kitz joined in on drums for two of the harder songs. Paul told me some great stories about all of the musicians he’s worked with over the years. He even told me the secret to I See a Darkness—Bunny Wailer’s ‘Blackheart Man.’...