The title of Matt Christensen’s latest solo release, Skeleton Vs Flesh, reveals the morbid truths of a modern-day world. The prevailing disconnection and spiritual malaise between us as humans. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year. Where a couple of years ago, it felt like this site was a really flourishing community, now there’s a slow decay indicative of these times. The transactional behaviour, staining the patchwork as people drift from one thing to the next in their own worlds.
So too outside the paradigm of online culture. Basic interactions in the workplace, almost non-existent. Is it the effects of Covid lockdowns? Pure selfishness? A mixture of both? Is it something we should each take ownership of, or is it a facet of life we should just accept in this modern age?
Listening to Christensen’s new release captures what a lot of people are experiencing in a world where functioning on a surface level feels like the norm. In friendships and even relationships, sometimes to their demise, which is what underpins Skeleton Vs Flesh.
Never one to fake it, there’s always grim reality in Christensen’s songs. And given the superficial nature of the world, the truth is his hallmark card where he transcends above so many. Skeleton Vs Flesh continues this in what is his most revealing solo release since 2024’s Driver. The latter, released prior to Zelienople’s Everything Is Simple, and while it revealed an artist looking for a port in the storm, Christensen finds it here two years later.
Always finding new emotional depths, Skeleton Vs Flesh quickly follows Christensen’s excellent new project, In A Waterfall In A Wood. Featuring his Zelienople bandmate Brian Harding and Tim Breen, their eponymous release is one of the best so far this year, and continues Christensen’s purple patch in 2026.
Matt Christensen - Skeleton Vs FleshPivoting to his solo works, and Skeleton Vs Flesh begins with Withered on the Vine. A Neil Young-inspired loner lament where Christensen catches magic in the moment. His guitar tones and twangs, creeping over a tape hiss that is a rare feature in much of his works. As its title suggest, Christensen shares a tale where even the last vestiges of a relationship are beyond repair. (“Smother like an angel dies / Red lips behind a smile … And still we try.”)
It continues later on the meandering Touch Those Words. Christensen, leaning into the microphone with a line that cuts you in half (“I open up to you / I do anything that you tell me to / But now I’m shutting down / Like I always do”), in what is further insight into a relationship’s dying embers. The trauma residue drips into I Don’t Obey. A chiming cloak of doom, as Christensen exposes a life of non-existent gods and crazy truths, to facing personal imperfections that send the mind into a tailspin.
Speaking of the aforementioned port, and there is room for some hope. On the achingly beautifully Lucky (“Everything is attractive somehow … All detached from nothing”), Christensen delivers something that would end up on his inevitable ‘Best-of’. So too Comfort – certified dream-pop gold, as saccharine guitar is offset by a minimal piano line that melts the heart. And as he parts with the lyrics to match (“Breathe through water / See through concrete”), it underlines the war Christensen has been fighting. (Which comes into sharper focus on the intoxicating Heaven Between You and I.)
However, it’s Skeleton Vs Flesh’s closing song, What A Dirty Trick Time Has Played On Me where Christensen finds the vital through line. The lyric, “And I rot half awake”, illuminating the kind campfire despair where Christensen just excepts how life shakes out. No matter how many wins you achieve, the inevitable is that we’re all destined for the dirt.
However, despite this heaviness, there’s still a feeling of hope attached to these songs. In a bid to move forward, on Skeleton Vs Flesh Christensen faces his demons, emerging from the deepest, darkest well. These songs are a mediation, as Christensen gracefully moves against the tide. Despite the amount of music he releases (including two new ones earlier this week), it’s never forced. His songs, fiercely diaristic, whereby they aren’t just therapeutic for him, but also for his listeners. Pure, human connection through song. And in 2026, who would’ve thought?
Skeleton Vs Flesh is out now. Purchase from Bandcamp.
