Neil Young comparisons flow thick and fast in the press surrounding Mat Gibson, which is a little unfair.
Comparing the London-based, Canadian-born songwriter to one of the most highly regarded and recklessly diverse recording artists of the last half century certainly puts him under a lot of pressure to perform, especially when Gibson actually sounds very little like Young, in any of his incarnations.
With Jonah, lifted from Gibson’s latest mini-album Forest Fire, we’re instead treated to the kind of reverberant vocal phrasings more characteristic of the likes of My Morning Jacket, set to some stripped back, earthy twang and allegorical storytelling. Where Forest Fire‘s version of the song features rattling percussion, some distant electric howl and twinkling chimes, the Clubhouse Sessions version available below finds Gibson at his most bare, and the song’s central motif, ‘it’s time you called for help’, is all the more chilling for it.
Forest Fire is out now on Clubhouse Records. Keep track of Mat here.