[DID NOT ATTEND: October 18, 2026] The Tallest Man on Earth / Gwenifer Raymond
I’d wanted to see The Tallest Man on Earth for many years and I finally did back in 2022. He is Kristian Matsson, a Swedish folksinger with a great guitar picking style and a deep powerful gritty voice. This is his second time back since then. Keswick is a hassle to get to and although I’d like to see him again, I already had tickets to see Acid Mothers Temple, so I wasn’t going to go anyway.
Gwenifer Raymond is a Welsh guitarist. She recently did a Tiny Desk and it is a marvel. She plays acoustic guitar, with a fingerpicking style that includes dramatic and fast chord playing as well.
As the Tiny Desk says,
There’s an understated charm about the Welsh guitarist’s limited banter behind the Desk, but little prepares you for what howls from her instrument. Raymond’s fingerstyle guitar drones with a haunted quality, but her flurry of bends, slides and chord clusters rip open the firmament. Steeped in pre-war blues, but picking up on the acoustic innovations of John Fahey and Jack Rose, Raymond started releasing records a little less than a decade ago. But it’s on Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark, one of NPR Music’s best albums of 2025, where the Cardiff-born and now Brighton-based guitarist forged an unmistakably distinct sound: a controlled recklessness that conjures spells with six strings. Exhilarating, but also terrifying. After the dizzying shred of “Jack Parsons Blues” and the scenic storytelling of “Bliws Afon Tâf,” Raymond comes up for air, suddenly aware of the audience in awe. It’s just her back there, after all, with an acoustic guitar — we’re lost in the trance, too. And then, as if on cue, she takes us to hell.
She’s an intense marvel and presumably left the room rapt. Maybe she’ll play at McCarter next year.
