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When Jay Matsueda sings "I'm glad you like what you see/because there's nothing inside of me" on his debut album, EAT YOUR SAD, listeners are going to want to react by saying: "we like what we see, and we love what we're getting to hear."
Nothing Inside Of Me, like the rest of the tracks on this debut CD, invites listeners into a textured world in which emotional highs and lows are matched with music and lyrics that melodically spiral like strands of DNA that identify this artist as unique... and also mark a lineage that harks back to the likes of Tim and Jeff Buckley, Cat Stevens, Tracy Chapman and Morrissey. There's something both excitingly new and warmly familiar about his work. His is a poet's soul singing out through notes taken from the alphabets of jazz, folk, world, alternative and indy music. It's this unfolding of beauty and pain, self-reflection and outward gaze that makes his work accessible to audiences belonging not only to different cultures but to different generations, as well.
A Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, Jay eclectically lists such artists as Sting, The Talking Heads, Glenn Gould, R.E.M. and Coldplay as among his personal favorites. He doesn't so much make an impression as he does an imprint... something solid and permanent; he's a creator of moods that encompasses a range of feelings from empathy to alienation, love lost to love found. The anonymous "you" that he sings to in many of his songs is both lover and muse... one he desires or who has hurt him. This approach to evoking his own journey gives him an Everyman quality - one whose lyrics so many can relate to even as they arise from the most personal of reflections. Representative of this kind of perspective are the lyrics in his song, Don't Worry (You Already Hurt Me).
Matsueda is, indeed, the embodiment of eclecticism in both the kind of music he makes as well as in those cultural sources that helped to form his artistry. EAT YOUR SAD is his debut, solo CD but note the likes of some of the music world's truly heavy hitters who back him on several of his captivating songs: Joel Shearer of Pedestrian (studio and touring musician whose guitar playing has been previously heard on works by Alanis Morissette, Annie Lennox and Damien Rice); Chris Wabich (percussionist who has worked with Sting and Sheila E.); Katisse Buckingham (sax and flute player who has performed with The Yellowjackets and worked with everyone from Dr. Dre to Herbie Hancock); and Ric Fierabracci (a touring bassist for the Chick Corea Elektric Band and Andy Summers).
Matsueda is highly intelligent and intuitive ... an amalgam of talent, dream and inspiration that marks him as an artist who demands our immediate attention. It's an attention that we can all expect we'll want to maintain as his music makes its way to both our hearts and our minds.
- Robin Keats / Jeff Buckley Music, September 21, 2008
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CDs availible:
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Jay Matsueda - EAT YOUR SAD (wudwink)
Track listing:
1 eat your sad
2 atmosphere
3 midsummer's eve
4 excess emissions
5 nothing inside of me
6 blue is what i see
7 don't worry (you already hurt me)
8 go away
9 seven days
10 when he wakes up
11 i can see you smile
also on itunes, cdbaby, amazno and other fines electronic retailers
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