The Tallest Man On Earth – the project of Swedish musician Kristian Matsson – presents Too Late For Edelweiss, an album of new covers out ANTI. With Too Late For Edelweiss, Matsson weaves together a sparse collection of home recordings made in Sweden and North Carolina, captured fresh off a 39-date run with the adrenaline of tour rattling through his veins. The songs on Too Late For Edelweiss have been with Matsson since he started playing music as The Tallest Man on Earth in 2006. In those early years, Matsson used to perform “Lost Highway” by Hank Williams before he had enough songs to flesh out a full set. In July 2022, Matsson released a cover of Swedish super star Håkan Hell- ström’s “För sent för Edelweiss,” a precious song that has been The Tall- est Man’s walk-on music before every performance for over a decade and what inspired the title of this covers album. Since then, in the lead-up to this announcement, he has quietly released other selections, including Lucinda Williams’ “Metal Firecracker,” Yo La Tengo’s “Tears Are In Your Eyes” and now “Lost Highway.” Mattson explains, “When I was a teenager I borrowed a Hank Williams album at the local library, and ‘Lost Highway’ has been haunting me ever since. Many vocal sound checks throughout my career have heard Hank’s advice.” As much as Too Late For Edelweiss feels like a scrapbook, an intimate me- mento with the ghosts of The Tallest Man’s earlier, sparser sound hovering at the edges, it’s also just the artifact of a moment - a flash of joy, of feeling recharged, of feeling good. These are the songs that happened to be in Mats- son’s head at the time he sat down to record. It came together so simply and easily – and in that way, it’s the purest distillation of making music - and being a fan of it, charting the connective tissue of a songwriter’s life.
Norma Tanega is best-known for her single ‘Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog’ which became an unlikely international hit in 1966. It not only brought her into the spotlight, but to the UK where she toured, appeared on TV and started a long-term relationship with Dusty Springfield.
Tanega would later move to the UK to live with Springfield. Still a musical force she signed to the UK arm of RCA-Victor and in 1971 released a single ‘Nothing Much Is Happening Today’ / ‘Antarctic Rose’ and an album called “I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile”. Neither sold strongly and splitting up with Springfield, Tanega returned to America.
In recent years original copies of “I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile” have become highly sought after by collectors of folk and psychedelic folk and change hands for up to £400. The album has, until now, never been reissued on vinyl.
Produced by Don Paul, Tanega worked in the studio with multi-instrumentalist Mike Moran and the results were an amazing confection. ‘Nothing Much Is Happening Today’ might have been an unlikely single but today sounds like an earworm especially when halfway through it sounds like Pink Floyd are backing Tanega. ‘What More In The World Could Anyone Be Looking For’ appears as two version – one lushly arranged and the other presented as simple folk song. Both are winner. ‘A Goodbye Song’ is a small treasure box about losing love. The album is glued together by a number of short intrumentals.
All told “I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile” is a lost classic.
The CD edition contains four bonus tracks. With liner-notes by Bob Stanley - I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Order One Today…