A thorough success, Matt John Henderson’s new album Lapse In Stillness is a serene yet introspective listening experience — drawing inspiration from folk-jazz fusion and art-rock sophistication. The album blends delicate acoustics, atmospheric textures, and evocative lyrics, inviting contemplation. Henderson masterfully bridges calming folk sounds with an array of gorgeous guitars, heart-tugging cello, atmospheric saxophone, and jazz-touched percussion.
“Hypnogogic Jerk” opens the album with an introspection on restlessness, weaving trickling acoustics and forlorn strings amidst a lament that “a hypnogogic jerk in the night kept me from dreaming of you.” Vague rhythmic pit-pattering melds into a gorgeous vocal spaciousness past the two-minute turn, showing shades of later-era Talk Talk in the ambient infusions alongside the free-flowing assortment of guitars and percussion. Somewhere between Talk Talk’s sophisticated intrigue and Nick Drake’s hazy folk arsenal sits the riveting “Hypnogogic Jerk,” and the overall enveloping vibe presented throughout Lapse In Stillness.
The album’s first single, “Taboo Sunyata Sutra” combines an anticipatory vocal sequence — signaling the incoming arrival of the titular concept — with frolicking guitars and meditative rhythmic hypnotics; it’s another firm showcase in atmospheric entrancement. A more foreboding quality persists on the subsequent “Your Sort Of Funeral Brother,” which lets out that “everyone’s slipping away,” while pondering life’s fragility; the line “like pages through books never read,” invokes a sense of wasted time as the end nears, and one looks back. Lapse In Stillness consistently impresses with poetic lyrical prowess and haunting accompanying folk-forward instrumentation.
Smooth, slithering saxophone melds with lonesome acoustics on the captivating “Gethsemane,” fit for rainy-day contemplation as water-like ambience swells amidst strings and brass into a jazzy rhythmic finality. The album’s epic centerpiece arrives next, in the gripping “Speaking In Tongues.” “She got into many philosophers,” the vocals suggest an expansion of the mind, traveling to the Amazon and beyond into a Dylan-esque vocal suaveness as the “we’ll drink some magic potion,” venturing furthers the growth in consciousness; the heady, adventurous spirit is conveyed with a beautifully artful charm, concluding with a delicate array of twinkling keys and lush electric guitars.
The album’s second half continues the enthralling songwriting, ranging from the subdued folk minimalism of “Harakiri” — again pondering life’s fragility in the context of the titular definition — to “The Distance Of The Moon,” which ventures through the cosmos in its array of capriciously gentle saxophone, spacious jazzy rhythms, and twangy guitar tones. “Lapse In Stillness” concludes the album with a serenely consuming immersion, fondly reminiscent of The Clientele in its reassuring vocal tone, slight strings, and nocturnal acoustics; it’s a fantastic, hypnotic finale to an album that frequently enamors in its emotive songwriting.
Lapse In Stillness is presently available on Bandcamp, and will hit other streaming platforms on November 6th.
