Dear Lover

East Coast singer-songwriter Matthew Ryan’s twelfth album, 2009’s Dear Lover, is his first to be recorded primarily at home. Nine of the album’s ten tracks were recorded at his home studio in Nashville. Once again, a songwriter often equated with great intimacy (his 2006 release, From a Late Night High Rise, confronted the loss of a friend to cancer and his brother to prison) finds himself locked in a room with his thoughts. Again, love slips away and Ryan says the things that need to be said. All this personal drama, however, leads to album of expansive sonic washes. The title track surfs a wall of electronics. The one track not recorded at home, “Some Streets Lead Nowhere,” uses dripping piano notes, plaintive acoustic guitars and subtle strings to serve up its message of bare survival. “The Wilderness,” with more electronic textures, rolls on with an unquenchable yearn. DJ Preach creates an extra layer of ambience for “Spark,” while the album winds down with the gripping, somber quiet of “The World Is…” and “The End of a Ghost Story.”