If your wistful road home winds to cold pillows, stained maps arousing a sense of failed escapism, half-drunk bottles of Malbec and an underlying hope for bolder beginnings, Matthew & the Atlas may well soundtrack those lonesome trudges to prickly welcome mats. Vocally aching half way between the existence-affirming baritone lulls of M. Ward, the cloying straight-edge strums of Paolo Nutini (please keep reading, there's banjos and a stamp of genuine intent in store) and the bruised croons of Bon Iver, Matthew's To The North EP has seen him land a support slot with Communion compilers Mumford & Sons up in Edinburgh tonight, a fair old hike from his humble Hampshire hometown of Aldershot. Littered with redemption, and lined with hymnal despair Matthew & his all-encompassing Atlas of nostalgic folk may not be quite as likely to wriggle free of the thorn bushes that envelope their wearily understated jigs, seemingly condemned never to reach the yellow brick road of Radio 1-charted success along which those Sons of Mumford now stroll. Yet charged with the organic wooded rolls and tear-jerking harmonies of Micah P. Hinson, the likes of I Will Remain and Within The Rose flourish incandescently over the dawning of a genre progression, finally squinting into a gleaming sunlight. Matthew Hegarty and his uplifting Atlas set coordinates for Brecon's Green Man get-together in August, by which time those scratches from his feet may have healed, washed with the waters of recognition. Dip your feet into Deadwood below.Matthew & The Atlas // Deadwood by Stayloose
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