Originally published by L.S. Media. July 27th 2011.

You can sometimes have too much of a good thing, thankfully music isn’t one of them. Any musician, regardless of age or genre that grabs your attention should be savoured and enjoyed for however long they produce great songs and inspire you to be a better person.

Matt Swift’s Lesson Over EP is a collection of songs that quite frankly are amongst the best that you will get to hear this year and with the enormously talented Barry Briercliffe in the producer’s chair, Matt has delivered a set of tunes that really stand out and capture the imagination.

The opening track Release Me immediately kicks off with some splendid guitar work and with a voice that comes across as a gentle Dave Grohl, certainly you can imagine the lyrics being written in the angst and style but with one major difference, Matt’s lives the words he is singing, a certain passion that makes the song bubble with excitement and prepares the listener for the quality to come.

From the heated and tremendous insanity of Release Me, Matt suddenly changes mood and lulls the listener in with a promise of sweet and charming couple of pieces of picturesque word stories with the title track Lesson Over and the exquisite lament of Wishing Man.

Surely there can be no bigger endorsement for an album than when your 15 year old son comes into the room and actually stops to listen to the music, lifts his head up at the end and instead of grunting his approval, he smiles and starts to talk passionately about the musicians work.

Lesson Over is a stunning piece of work that quite simply will bowl you with such force then you won’t be able to help yourself but love it.

Matt Swift’s E.P is available on his website or as a download via I Tunes.

Ian D. Hall