THE PASADENA WEEKLY
by Bliss

It says something about Matthew Lee's music that, when my recently paid-off truck was totaled in an electrical fire, one of the first things I thought about was Lee's demo tape, which had been in heavy rotation on the truck stereo.
When the smoke cleared from the wreckage, I was almost as upset about his tape melting into black goo under what used to be my dashboard, as I was about the fact that insurance covered none of the damage -- and that it would be many moons before I could replace my beloved Ranger. It also says something about my outsized reverence for music, but that's another story.
Fast forwarding to the present, the truck's in a scrap heap and the tape's been replaced with a new CD, "Footsteps." Lee is performing at festivals and local venues in support of that album. He was recently selected as a Top-10 National Performing Songwriter at the Wildflower '99 festival in Texas, and also was showcased at the considerably glitzier Emerging Artists and Talent in Music, and North By Northeast music-industry schmoozefests in Las Vegas and Toronto.
Comparisons to Tom Waits run fast and thick, but despite his raspy sound and similarly offbeat sensibilities, the unassuming Lee is influenced more by his Midwestern roots. He moved here from Michigan in 1993 after securing a publishing deal with an established company that folded a week after his arrival. Then a "series of working relationships with different producers," enchanted by his songs and gravely voice (a riveting flashpoint for listeners), culminated in a prestigious production deal that consequently evolved into a bizarre trial by fire.
"I kind of got taken to school on the music industry in that," Lee says. The politicized end of the business left him feeling "pretty empty" and distanced from his own creativity, until he realized he was writing and performing on autopilot. "It wasn't coming from a real honest place," he said.
Lee realized he needed to reconnect with his original reasons for making music, and that he also had to make things happen for himself, musically and career-wise. In an exquisite stroke of cosmic timing, a colleague affered him free studio time. That freedom allowed Lee to synthesize his experiences with a new creative perspective. He learned to engineer and produced "Footsteps," a buoyant, hopeful album brimming with elegant melodies, earthy rhythms, cool vibes, wise humor, adventurous vocals and provocative lyrical snapshots.
"Another Saturday -- home alone/Trying to buy me a pizza over the telephone/Louie Armstrong on the stereo rat-tat-tattin'/Stumble over to the kitchen table and mix me another Manhattan."
Unlike his 1997 album, "The Matthew Lee Band," which was passionate yet oddly tense (and over-compressed), "Footsteps" developed organically, with no preconceived notions, and comes much closer to the sly spontaneity of his live performances. Free from the pressure of outside expectations, Lee relaxes into his own grooves with outstanding results.
"I just wanted to like it," he says. "And I wanted it to be me."
He succeeded.

VICTORY MUSIC REVIEW
by Richard Middleton

LA singer-songwriter and pianist Matthew Lee's music is earthy, wistful, and always passionate. What grabs us immediately is his gritty, breathy voice, and the hushed, rhythmic exuberance of his delivery. There are hints of Waits and Prine, without the former's idiosyncratic theatricality or the latter's twang, but with all their weary dignity and aliveness. The band arrangements are multi-layered yet open, leaving plenty of room for Lee to explore the shadings of his vivid, thoughtful lyrics. Among his characters are devoted lovers and restless wanderers, those just about to give up hope and those whose hope is just reawakening. Great stuff.