Sometimes The Blues Is Just A Passing Bird is a 2010 EP by Swedish singer‑songwriter Kristian Matsson, who records as The Tallest Man On Earth, released via Dead Oceans as a five‑song companion to his album The Wild Hunt. Running just over 17 minutes, it collects material written during The Wild Hunt period but presented as a distinct, self‑contained chapter in his catalog, emphasizing his evolution as a folk troubadour and his willingness to push beyond the “Swedish Bob Dylan” tag often attached to his early work.Musically, the EP remains rooted in intimate, voice-and-guitar folk, but it marks one of Matsson’s first incorporations of electric guitar on the track “The Dreamer,” adding a new tonal color to his characteristically fingerpicked playing and rough‑hewn, emotionally direct vocals. Songs like “Little River,” “Tangle in This Trampled Wheat,” and “Thrown Right at Me” showcase his knack for mixing vivid, meandering imagery with simple melodies, while “Like the Wheel”—a reworked version of a bonus track from The Wild Hunt—trades its original piano arrangement for more adventurous guitar, turning it into a ballad of self‑determination and quiet conviction. Critics received the EP as a strong, forward‑looking statement: concise but substantial evidence that Matsson was tightening his songwriting and deepening his emotional range without becoming formulaic, suggesting more ambitious full‑length work on the horizon.
