Matt Deighton stands alone as a multi-talented singer and songwriter of rare repute.

Idiosyncratic and blessed with an ear for melody, he stands alongside the likes of John Martyn, Joni Mitchell and Nick Drake for his ability to craft songs of beauty and power.

Illumined in the modern musical firmament, 2018 sees him stepping forward once again with a new 10-track solo album entitled Doubtless Dauntless.

Those are two words that go a long way to describe Matt after three decades spent making some of the most arresting music to come out of the UK.

Recorded in Monnow Valley Studio in Monmouthshire in September 2016, the pastoral setting for Doubtless Dauntless proved perfect for an intensely artistic get-together of some of the most feted musicians of the past 40 years, the record’s personnel including piano maestro Steve Nieve (Elvis Costello), Linda Lewis, Gary Carpenter (associate musical director on The Wicker Man, 1973), Ben Trigg and Matt’s ex bandmates in The Family Silver, Steve White (The Style Council, Paul Weller) and Damon Minchella (Ocean Colour Scene, Richard Ashcroft). First hitting the airwaves with Mother Earth in the early ’90s, Matt enjoyed early success with the release of a clutch of albums that included The People Tree (Acid Jazz Records, 1993).

With the release of the classic single Jesse from that same album, his reputation as a serious new voice was established. After Mother Earth’s disbandment in 1996, Deighton joined Paul Weller’s band on lead guitar and vocals and temporarily replaced Noel Gallagher in Oasis when Gallagher quit in the middle of touring in 2000.

But his back catalogue speaks for itself. As a solo artist, he distilled his art into four soulful folk-tinged albums (Villager, 1995; You Are The Healer, 2000; The Common Good, 2002; and Wake Up The Moths, 2004), followed more recently (2017) by a compelling collaboration with Chris Difford, the resurrected album called Kids Steal Feelings. Matt has recorded and played with Paul Weller, Oasis, Bill Fay, Brian Auger, Carleen Anderson, Roger Daltrey, Chris Difford of Squeeze and many others and with Doubtless Dauntless he proves he’s getting better with age. The hymn-like No One’s Lost Tribe is gilded by Gary Carpenter’s lyre playing, while May You Give It All Away and Each Time You Find Out stand out for their melancholic beauty.

The sweet floating soul of Dreamstate (with Linda Lewis) and the slow build of Need Never Be lead to How Do We Show Our Love and the bravura Doubtless Dauntless, a 10-minute instrumental demonstrative of Matt’s mastery of the guitar.

He can write of modern malaise, thwarted desires and the need to live and love, each song tempered with a positivity and sense of humour that makes them glitter on the musical vine.

Doubtless Dauntless is a perfect pop synthesis of folk, rock and soul that, in equal measure, is both compelling and impossible to pigeon hole, Matt possessing the rare songwriting ability – or, some might say, the dying art – of being able to winnow existential truths from modern life, writing with an economy of lyrical gesture, his lyrics deft and weighted, ?guratively precise.

Forever part of the British pantheon of popular music, the songs are diamond cut, his voice borne of decades spent playing at the highest level. Few are as good as Matt Deighton, but none so unique.

“Doubtless Dauntless is filled with songs of renewal and rebirth, of love, of loss and of love again. It’s beautiful and poignant.” Mojo

“As one of this country’s best-kept secrets, Deighton was once a leading light of the acid jazz movement that helped re-energise the rudderless world of British music as the 1980s had sputtered to a close. Blending the sounds of The Byrds and Hendrix with funk and rare groove (and a dash of The Small Faces), the resultant fusion of Deighton, and his band Mother Earth, was enough to usher him into the top rank of songwriters and guitarists.” Hufington Post UK
“A master craftsman at work.” Louder Than War

“Deighton’s songs are made with a more patient, appreciative future generation in mind.”
The Observer