Today, Matthew Davidson is announcing a new album called Noon, his fourth release of ambling Americana as Twain shared through his label home of Keeled Scales. The album title refers to where he’s at in his creative and biological life—a sort of gentle acceptance that he’s at a “resting point,” as he puts it, rather than “the crest of a hill.”
Such gentle acceptance can be heard on the reflective first single from the new album titled “Priestess” in which Davidson’s fluttering acoustic guitar syncs with his soft vocals as he mulls over advice that was initially intended for a friend, but which ultimately proved more useful directed at himself.
“It’s about allowing the heart to speak and being direct,” he explains before detailing a few key proper nouns named in the song. “‘Rugby’ is a street in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, and ‘the Odyssey’ is my old van. The inner landscape of the song, the place it takes me and where it was written, is Las Trampas, New Mexico, and I think about the cold nights and sleeping on the ground under wool blankets, taping up holes in my sleeping bag with duct tape, Folgers coffee in the blue cardboard can, and hearing the elk song for the first time.”
Hear the track—filled out by backing electric guitar, minimal percussion, and occasional bassoon—below.
