What’s the Matter, M Ross?, the third installment from the idiosyncratic M Ross Perkins, finds our boy on an inward journey, exploring the transcendental and existential with his most lyrically confessional album to date. It’s a record that serves notice that multi-instrumentalist Perkins belongs amongst the singer/songwriter zeitgeist that has swooned over MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee while serving as a conduit to optimism.
Composed, performed, and recorded completely by Perkins in his Dayton, OH studio, What’s the Matter… is both the most stripped down and expansive within his tryptic of albums. The headphone symphonies move with a deliberate, composed sophistication while the lyrics explore fresh territory, turning the camera away from the “butterscotch revue” and pointing it into a mirror. "The touchstones of psych pop remain: flourishes of Nilsson are still here, but so are Gram Parsons and Jonathan Richman. If you want to assign geography to What’s the Matter, M Ross?, the album is equal parts Laurel Canyon and Big Pink, more Woodstock the town than the festival. Perkins is a self-contained (late-period) Teenage Fanclub with George Harrison’s spiritual sense of inner wanderlust.
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