Kalle Mattson will release his new album, Youth., on September 7th. The singer/songwriter will hit the road in support of the album on October 5th in Sault Ste. Marie, On. Recently he shared the video for album track “Kids On The Run” the song is available via streaming services.

Youth. is described as a coming-of-age record about innocence lost, promises denied, and the purgatory of one’s mid-20s. When Kalle Mattson began writing his upcoming album, his motto was “folk is dead”, but he still demoed all the songs, “just me and an acoustic guitar in my bedroom …unique, I know,” he says. While the songs may begin on the ol’ six string, the final tracks on Youth. see Mattson shifting the focus to keyboards and drum machines with help from producer Colin Munroe (Drake, Sky Ferreira).

Mattson wanted to write about his friends who are still there, and about his generation who are now between adolescence and adulthood — the latter being a delayed concept in the modern world, when few people yet feel confident on their life path by age 25. “It’s about when dreams become regrets, all your friends become strangers when you don’t have something binding everyone together, like school,” he says. “I thought about coming-of- age movies and novels, and couldn’t think of many coming-of-age albums.” That is, except for two of his all-time favourites: Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and Darkness On The Edge Of Town.

Sonically, however, Youth. owes more to Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, with a lonely, ghostly timbre to the synths employed by Munroe — who also worked on Mattson’s 2015 EP Avalanche, nominated for a JUNO Award. Munroe dressed up Mattson’s acoustic demos and shared songwriting credit on tracks that are too catchy to be anything but pure pop music. Mixed by Noah Georgeson (Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom, Andy Shauf), Youth. is a studio record,” says Mattson. “I wanted to give it a specific feeling and vibe, to create its own sonic world.” Those early demos will be released as bonus material, as well as remixes of some tracks; there is also an entire version of Youth. made entirely with synths and drum machines, which was shelved. The proper album is a marriage of the songs’ stark origins and Munroe’s machinations

Kalle Mattson
Youth.
Tracklist

Once
Kids On The Run
Broken In Two
Strangers
Fades Away
My Holy Ghost
Searching For Somewhere
Without You
Running Against The Wind
Astronaut.

Kalle Mattson
Tour Dates

Oct 5 – Sault Ste. Marie, ON – Loplops
Oct 12 – Montreal, QC – Quai Des Brumes
Oct 13 – Quebec City, QC – L’Anti
Oct 23 – Kingston, ON – Grad Club
Oct 24 – Hamilton, ON – Mills Hardware
Oct 25 – St Catharines, ON – Warehouse
Oct 26 – Waterloo, ON – Starlite
Oct 27 – London, ON – Aeolian Hall
Nov 10 – Ottawa, ON – The Studio at NAC
Nov 16 – Burnstown, ON – Neat Cafe
Nov 17 – Toronto, ON – Longboat Hall
Nov 24 – North Bay, ON – Les Compagnons
Nov 28 – Saskatoon, SK – Amigo’s
Nov 29 – Edmonton, AB – Almanac
Nov 30 – Calgary, AB – Festival Hall
Dec 3 – Vancouver, BC – The Fox Theatre
Dec 4 – Victoria, BC – Lucky Bar
Dec 6 – Regina, SK – The Exchange
Dec 7 – Winnipeg, MB – TBD