Matt Geary is an American guitarist born in 1992 and raised in the working class suburbs of Philadelphia who blends ambience, folk and post-rock. He can create wonderful things with only a guitar and piano at his disposal. Drawing from a rich background of influences ranging from Robbie Basho, Rosetta, Max Richter and the writings of Carl Jung, Geary weaves tapestries of intersecting, flowing melodies floating over shifting post-rock ambience, all of which is handled with grace and finesse on his debut album “The Silent Watcher, The Mountain Is Woe.”
Movement is the key to Geary’s approach to music, evident in his song titles describing an emotion as a “Line of Despair,” or how the act of sleeping seems to be dogged by cryptic conversations in his world. However nowhere is this more evident than the music itself, with frenetic chord progressions bursting out of contemplative fingerpicking or from the melody of a solitary piano. All of this is backed by cascading waves of guitar abstractions, although in Geary’s hands they sound less like aimless feedback and more like transmissions of a celestial nature. “The Mountain Is Woe” perhaps because it is stationary.
This is music for internal exploration, in equal parts contemplative and engaging. No words are necessary and the empty space is as important as the chords. Geary sets the stage for wandering thoughts with his compositions and leaves interpretation to anyone who would listen.