Bildungsroman: it's a term that might stick with you a decade or two after a semester of English. A German word roughly meaning "novel of formation," the bildungsroman can be more readily understood as a subset of the coming-of-age tale: a protagonist experiences an emotional hardship, embarks on a journey, and transitions from youth into adulthood and maturity as a result of their trials. And while the term is typically applied to literary works, there are plenty of musical examples: from Bruce Springsteen's early interrogations of life and love in the swamps of Jersey to more recent efforts from the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Arcade Fire, and Miley Cyrus, the sonic bildungsroman is alive and well. A strong new entry into the genre is Ottawa singer-songwriter Kalle Mattson's Someday, the Moon Will Be Gold, a document of personal growth set against the backdrop of his mother's death five years ago.
The album is Mattson's third full-length—he debuted with 2009's Whisper Bee, and followed that up with 2011's Anchors and a 2012 EP, *Lives in Between—*but it feels like a debut in many respects: his sound has never been this fully realized, and he has never drawn himself in such clear, unflinching light. To his credit, Mattson is well aware of the leap the record constitutes: in an interview with the Ottawa Citizen, he noted that, “this record really feels like a first, or a debut…I worked harder on this one than any of the others and for the first time I really feel like I’m singing about something that means something to me.” As a writer and performer, he revels in the great tradition of Weird Indie Rock Men, the line of Tweedy and Mangum and Malkmus, and the recent golden age of Canadian rock music. At 23, he spent his formative years in the 00s listening to scores of great bands pouring out of Montreal and Toronto like water from broken taps, many under the umbrella of collectives like Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire. His voice—an idiosyncratic, knotty yawp—and his penchant for bold, nakedly emotional composition are clearly derived from these two sources.
Mattson isn’t particularly concerned with wit or cheek, just gut punches: Someday, the Moon Will Be Gold is a record clearly designed with the cathartic climax in mind, and there’s no shortage of them throughout the album. Many of the finest moments are borne out of his smart deployment of orchestration, whether it’s helping to kick down a set of doors (on the dusty, rollicking opener “An American Dream”) or blooming around soaring clusters of harmonies and crashing percussion (that’s the record’s heart, the mammoth “Eyes Speak”). Mattson’s tasteful use of horns as exclamation points stands out at a time when artists across genres have turned to brass as a signifier of class, slathering it over their compositions to indicate they’re writing “serious” music. In Mattson’s hands, it’s about heart.
The richness of Someday, the Moon Will Be Gold’s sound feels earned by Mattson’s lyrics, which are dense, thoughtful, and inspired by a collection of tough experiences. To hear him tell it, he dodged meaningful interaction with his mother’s death until just last year, when his grandmother passed away. Mattson returned to his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, having finished university in Ottawa and a brief stretch of touring, and spent three months alone working and writing this album. His mother’s spirit courses through it, and carries with it varied bursts of anger, loneliness, faith, and hope. In many ways, the album views Mattson’s loss through the prism of interaction with his hometown: he sings about the difficulties of coming from a hardscrabble northern city, where it seems like the only notable thing about the place you grew up is the magnitude of its isolation, with a weariness and conflicted mind that’s instantly familiar and affecting. It's a struggle here, to find the balance between feeling tied to where you came from and wanting something better, something more. Grief can hang in a similar balance, stuck somewhere between never giving up someone you’ve lost and picking up the pieces, moving on with your life. It’s clear from Mattson’s writing that he’s familiar with both sides of the equation.
