Kalle Mattson

Kalle Mattson functions as the alias adopted by Ottawa-based Canadian singer/songwriter Kalle Wainio, who spent his formative years in Sault Ste. Marie. At seventeen he started committing to tape a series of folk-rock compositions shaped by the styles of Bob Dylan, Wilco, and the Weakerthans. His first full-length effort, Whisper Bee, appeared in 2009; two years later he delivered the Howie Beck-mixed Anchors, a release that earned widespread praise and secured a pair of Northern Ontario Music Award victories in the categories of Album of the Year (Group) and Songwriter of the Year. The 2012 EP Lives in Between followed, generating widespread online attention through its accompanying clips for “Waterfalls” and “Thick as Thieves.” Mattson’s third studio album, the Polaris Music Prize-nominated Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold, surfaced in 2014 and drew thematic inspiration from his border hometown and the loss of his mother five years earlier. In August 2015 he issued the EP Avalanche, a concise set he characterized as a mini-LP exploring the twenty-something haze of “anxiety, nostalgia, the past, the future.”