Album Review: Hers by Matt Maltese

In 2016, barely out of his teens, the British-Canadian singer-songwriter released a cover of Leonard Cohen's "Paper Thin Hotel", a song about hearing the object of your affection making love in the room next door. By his own admission, he listened to "an unhealthy amount" of Cohen when he was young, so it's not all that surprising that he has a penchant for melancholy and melodrama. And just as the late crooner did, he's devoted much of his career to highlighting the complexity of relationships - and the heartache that tends to follow.

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Matt Maltese has always sought to blend the classic, the familiar, with something a bit more idiosyncratic and individual. Often compared to Randy Newman, his bubblegum sweet McCartney-esque way with melody shrouds the darkness in his lyrics, pulling at the heartstrings while he whispers in your ear. In that fashion, new album 'Hers' could be a defining statement - it's both lighter, more fulsome than before, while appreciably darker.

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At this point, Matt Maltese is an undeniably safe pair of hands; having long since landed on that winning formula of classic songwriting sprinkled with self-deprecating humour, he would likely be hard pushed to write a bad album. And so, for sixth studio LP 'Hers', his conundrum was not one of execution, but evolution. Here, he does indeed examine music's most ubiquitous theme - namely, the deeply personal yet universal anguish of matters of the heart - but elevates it such that even the most quotidian of details becomes filmic.

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