A memorable output from Matt of Matts, “Come Thou Fount of Unforgetting” is a stirring psych-folk reimagining of a childhood hymn, embracing spiritual ambiguity, fractured love, and an ominous sense of impending disaster through evolving instrumentation and poetic lyricism.
A spacious array of warming synths, sporadic rhythms, and wordless backing harmonic serenity builds beautifully, complemented by a poetic lead delivery. “Come my love it’s almost morning,” Matt of Matts sings, moving from that initially subdued quality to a more expressive “we all sing from” entrancement, with lines like “the beasts that wore our skin” and “no field could find a harvest” conjuring a sort of back-to-nature, timeless perspective—where emotions like love, rage, and confusion linger regardless of time and place. “Come Thou Fount of Unforgetting” is a stirring success, enveloping in its hymn-like lyrical depictions and evolving psych-folk instrumentation.
The artist elaborates on the track, below:
“A rejection and reclaiming of my favorite childhood hymn (i’m the firstborn son of an evangelical exorcist). Some days I half understand it, most days I’m delighted to be fully mystified. It’s clearly a love song, love persisting in the midst of some fracture. But there’s something sinister behind it too, a looming disaster? Is it the guillotine’s halves yearning to be reunited? Or maybe a love song to the earth from the apocalypse? But then why does the apocalypse refer to itself as ‘we’? I’m as confused as anyone.”
—
This and other tracks featured this month can be streamed on the updating Obscure Sound’s ‘Emerging Singles’ Spotify playlist.
