Written by: Geoff Tischman

Matthew Ryan played a blistering set last week at the Paramount Theatre in Huntington, New York and I was fortunate enough to have caught it.

Touring behind his Kevin Salem-produced new album Boxers, Ryan was in fine form. Among the finest American singer/songwriters of the last thirty years, Ryan’s voice evokes Springsteen and Westerberg, but his compositions can burn like Crocodile-era Echo and the Bunnymen or ache like Mike Scott on the Waterboys’ This Is The Sea.

If you haven’t picked up Boxers, you should do it immediately. It’s an album that’s rife with urgency, heartbreak and hope.

And Ryan is not only a solid performer, his songs reveal their complexity and their intensity in a live setting.

Here are some of my favorite shots of the night.