Matt Pond’s recommendation: “Neil Young gets me going. It seems as if he has no choice in the matter of music. He has to make it to be alive. I would very much appreciate being catapulted in his direction.”

New to Neil Young? Matt Pond recommends you start here: “Start with Tonight’s the Night. I can’t think of an album more imperfectly perfect. The performances push against everything orthodox. The voices scrape and scratch apart all the right words. The guitars are brittle and broken. And yet everything that could be perceived as a mistake somehow makes sense. Honestly, the lines between music, art and feeling become indistinguishable… If you want to laugh at my words, you’re fully invited.

You really can’t go wrong with After the Gold Rush, Chrome Dreams or Harvest, either.

A Man Needs a Maid is probably the most misunderstood and elegant
self-deprecation song written. After my catapult crash-landing, I wouldn’t mind being sweetly buried in it’s orchestration.”

About the guest author, Matt Pond: The Matt Pond PA group burst on to the music scene in 1998 when they won an unsigned band competition on CDNow (remember that site?). Since then, this Philadelphia-moved-to-Brooklyn outfit has opened for the likes of Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Liz Phair and Keane and most recently has released the lovely The Dark Leaves collection, an indie record that can competitively sit next to one of your Wilco selections in your CD carousel. Check their official web page for tour dates.