Matt Kivel

Proof that you can’t judge a year too quickly, even December has kept the quality releases coming in 2025. Following a tributary excursion into new territory as Wine Country earlier this yer, Matt Kivel (Bonnie ‘Prince Billy’s Band, Princeton) returns to the solitary environs for his latest, an autobiographical exploration of his life’s ties to L.A. The record both embraces and rejects the spareness that has marked Matt’s post-Princeton career. There’s still a heartfelt sincerity to the record, but the austerity drops away. Kivel’s draped the record in a kind of faded grandeur that’s a far cry from some of his early outings for Woodsist and Driftless. His unbuttoned troubadour sways under the stage lights, circles the smoke rings of 3 AM studio sessions, scrawls lyrics in the back booth of the bar. Among a dizzying array of strings, steel, organs, vocal volleys, and fuzz rumbles, Matt wrestles with the ghosts of Los Angeles and the specter of his own past.

Among the highways and hillsides, Kivel digs into his tangled roots in the city, exploring his family’s arrival on the heels of his father’s acting career, and its ties to Robert Redford. Escape From L.A. wrestles with missed opportunities and the yoke of expectations. Much like the recent album from Heat Manager, the record has moments that look back on the often idealized aughts indie scene and the hollowed out dreams that were offered around seemingly every corner. The record is a glazed mirror of generational through lines, dark around the edges, but it’s not all dour reflections. At its heart, Escape From L.A. is hopeful, watching the scars of the past fade, but still running its fingers along their tracks from time to time as a warm reminder. The album took shape over seven years of songwriting, scrapping, shaping, and shifting, and as it lays down on the turntable, it arrives as a remarkable rumination on family, fame, frustrations, forgetting, and forgiving.

Support the artist. Buy it HERE.