Matt the Electrician

One Thing Right

This homey collection of love songs, directed largely at Matt “the Electrican” Sever’s wife and kids and to the thrills of domesticity itself, will notch one up with the hearts of grownups who’ve become parents but still like to get it on. The track listing reads like a laundry list of the mundane: “The Kids,” “Money,” “My Dog.” Yet the charm of Sever’s work is the complexity of feeling that weighs the seeming simplicity of the subject matter. These songs are both earnest and honest, and the local singer-songwriter’s celebration of everyman’s life is as free of affectation as one could hope. One Thing Right falters in its final quarter, the songs exhibiting an unfortunate sameness, but maybe that’s Sever’s genius. His wry suggestion that although the life of everyman is something to applaud, even contentment gets old, rings all too true.

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This article appears in January 26 • 2007.

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