Meadow

On 'Meadow', Matthew Xavier Corrigan dons the coat of the lone ranger, seeking solace through the images of people in his past - the forklift driver "living on the edge of a knife", a lost old school friend, itinerants passing through. It's a fitting motif for his first work released under his given name. Yet the space is filled with lush, airy, mercurial instrumentation; deft piano fills and a soaring alto sax show the many hands that built it as the song enters its explosive final quarter.

Releasing Sunday April 30th 2023, it is the first single and opener from the EP from ten, with love, which will follow on Friday June 26th.

On April 30th 2022, one year prior to Meadow's release, Matthew pulled the curtain on his previous solo project Ghostking is Dead with what he called a "full-length eulogy". The goal was to free himself to focus on live performance and arrangement, escaping the confines of digital composition. This process shows throughout throughout his new EP. Corrigan is accompanied by Peter O'Sullivan and Hugh O'Connor, his long-standing bandmates in Alex Gough's quartet performing jazzy hip-hop cuts throughout Europe: their shared improvisational vocabulary successfully makes the leap across to folk music. These final recordings mark the result of countless takes and practice sessions. The songs feel deliberate and fluid all at once - as though they were lived-in for years.

Of all the songs on the EP, opener 'Meadow' reveals this dynamic most clearly as the song moves into its last act; the protagonist arriving to a former idyll to find the land poisoned and barren. The song structurally collapses and rebuilds itself around the metaphorical poison, venom dripping from every aspect of the performance, notably including Dylan Howe's appearance on the alto sax.