Artist:     Matt Bauer

Album:     Dream's End

Label:     Self-Released

Release Date:     11/13/2015

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Matt Bauer’s new album creates a magical world where you need to actively listen or you’ll run the risk of missing the beauty that lies within. There are so many albums released today that don’t have nearly as much character as this, as I recently told my friend, saying, “It’s like listening to art.” The imagery that Bauer creates with his lyrics is breathtaking, and this is an album that I would recommend listening to on its own while doing nothing else. In fact, Bauer is releasing Dream’s End on green-clear colored vinyl, which would be the ideal way to listen to it since listening to vinyl is an event in itself, demanding all your attention… something Bauer’s album definitely deserves.

The world Bauer paints is incredible, both the lyrics and music creating lovely images that resonate with you even after you listen. They are pleasantly complicated, demanding you re-listen in an effort to pay close attention to Bauer’s words. In the opening track, Bauer sings, “I broke myself apart to find I was what I thought I was/no purpose in my seconds/no meaning in my blood,” reflecting on the uncertainty of identity. In “Silver Orchard,” a small group of voices quietly and desperately sing, “please don’t go/ please don’t go,” which is then accompanied by steady drumming and followed by a sad, tortured violin. The violin on that track is breathtaking, and overpowers with its emotional significance – it is as if the violin is begging for a second glance, a second chance. “When you speak my body trembles” sings Bauer and accompanying female vocalist in “Stag in the Cattails,” which is mimicked by the trembling instrumentals. My favorite on the album is “I Am Trying to Disappear,” with lyrics like, “With the sunset in her fists she’ll crush the end of the day,” which creates such beautiful imagery. “I can’t go back to a world where I can’t be what/ be what I want” is sung by what seems like a nervous Bauer in “False Lights,” which adds to the importance of the words.

Bauer’s Dream’s End is a beautifully composed album. Bauer’s voice fantastically meanders through out the album, but it’s the instrumentals that dominate it. They echo the forests and mountains, rivers and hidden streams. It is an album that seems to have been organically produced, by nature itself, and when I close my eyes and listen to “Fields, No Body” I feel like I’m walking in a forest straight out of a Tolkien novel. The more I think about it, Bauer’s album makes me feel like I’m floating in a dream, or perhaps, as Bauer suggests, a Dream’s End.

– Claudia Arnoldo