The songs on Too Late For Edelweiss have been with Matsson since he started playing music as The Tallest Man on Earth in 2006. In those early years, Matsson used to perform "Lost Highway" by Hank Williams before he had enough songs to flesh out a full set.
Tracklist:
1 For Sent for Edelweiss
2 Metal Firecracker
3 Little Birdie
4 Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye
5 Blood Bank
6 Tears Are in Your Eyes
7 Fairest of the Seasons
8 Pink Rabbits
9 Lost Highway
10 In My Life
In July 2022, Matsson released a cover of Swedish super star Håkan Hellström's "För sent för Edelweiss," a precious song that has been The Tallest Man's walk-on music before every performance for over a decade and what inspired the title of this covers album. Since then, in the lead-up to this announcement, he has quietly released other selections, including Lucinda Williams' "Metal Firecracker," Yo La Tengo's "Tears Are In Your Eyes" and now "Lost Highway." Mattson explains, "When I was a teenager I borrowed a Hank Williams album at the local library, and 'Lost Highway' has been haunting me ever since. Many vocal sound checks throughout my career have heard Hank's advice." As much as Too Late for Edelweiss feels like a scrapbook, an intimate memento with the ghosts of The Tallest Man's earlier, sparser sound hovering at the edges, it's also just the artifact of a moment - a flash of joy, of feeling recharged, of feeling good. These are the songs that happened to be in Matsson's head at the time he sat down to record. It came together so simply and easily - and in that way, it's the purest distillation of making music - and being a fan of it, charting the connective tissue of a songwriter's life.
