Bon Iver & the Tallest Man on Earth @ Town Hall, NYC ----- ------------------ (night 1) - pics & setlist

December 11, 2008

Bon Iver and The Tallest Man on Earth played their first of three NYC shows together last night (10/10). The show was at Town Hall where Thursday’s show will also be. Friday is at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. The Tallest Man also played a show on Tuesday at Mercury Lounge with Marissa Nadler.

“Kristian Matsson, the Swedish songwriter who bills himself as the Tallest Man on Earth, flaunted every rasp, buzz and crack in his voice. They are the most immediate signs of a musician who draws on the structures of folky songwriting from the 1960s — the basic chords, the picking and strumming, the chains of verses and refrains without choruses — but who has no use for the cozy decorum that would define singer-songwriters later on. His model is the visionary Bob Dylan of songs like “When the Ship Comes In,” along with Dylan’s own models: the craggy bluesmen and back-country singers who never tried to smooth things over.” [NY Times]

More pictures, and Bon Iver’s setlist from last night, below…