It’s funny how time keeps looping back on us.
Way back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Matt Wilson and John Munson, a pair of Minneapolis musicians who met while both were at Harvard, formed half of the group Trip Shakespeare, an alt-rock band with a ‘60s sensibility fueled by Wilson’s sweet falsetto and some seriously offbeat songwriting — anyone remember “Toolmaster of Brainerd”?
Trip Shakespeare, which also included Matt Wilson’s talented songwriting brother Dan, grew a sizable following among Midwestern college crowds. But their music was unfortunately a little out of step with the grunge wave that swept out of the Pacific Northwest to drown us all in black days and the smell of teen spirit. (Seriously: “Bachelorette” was the greatest shoulda-been bar-scene anthem ever.) Shortly after releasing their final album, Lulu, in 1991, Trip Shakespeare reached what seemed to be its final destination.
While Dan Wilson and Munson went on to enjoy commercial success (and three full-length album releases) as Semisonic — the group that contributed “Closing Time” to our collective late ‘90s soundtracks — Matt Wilson and Munson never stopped wanting to play together.
“We became fixated on having a band and recording and touring,” says Matt Wilson, calling from Minneapolis, where he now works for a creative agency. “It’s just kinda become what we do. It’s an article of faith.”
That faith has most assuredly been rewarded. After spending most of the aughts writing music together and performing in clubs, first as The Flops, then as The Twilight Hours, Wilson and Munson are now touring in support of Black Beauty, The Twilight Hours’ 13-song debut album. The band plays the Stoughton Opera House Sept. 21.
Black Beauty was a project a long time coming. It took Wilson and Munson seven years to write and record it, and some of the songs on the album were written as long as 15 (!) years ago. Wilson’s a little sheepish about the song “Telephone,” a love song that revolves around some seriously outdated tech.
“John keeps saying that’s about three generations back now,” he jokes.
The call-backs to Trip Shakespeare’s Beatles-meets-Billy Preston sound are, unsurprisingly, both copious and welcome, whether it’s the strumming guitars, Munson and Wilson’s voices harmonizing, or Wilson’s sweet falsetto, which hasn’t lost an octave. Sometimes they’re overt— a guitar riff on the song “Troublemaker” is lifted directly from “Today You Move,” from Lulu.
“It’s partly a nod,” Wilson explains. “It’s also partly that everyone’s only got so many moves.”
Ironically, Wilson’s something of a self-described hermit — he’s never been a huge music consumer. “I just want make stuff, be inspired by the things that feel awesome and classic to me,” he says of his musical tendencies. “That’s always kept me beside the times and of the times.”
That’s a line that could also describe Black Beauty, a collection of music Wilson describes as a group of guys struggling to create something wonderful.
“It’s that, and the sadness that emerges every time I start writing words,” says Wilson, who says he’s always been deeply nostalgic — even as early as in elementary school. “It doesn’t characterize my outlook on daily life, but there is something bleak about it all. You lose things. It doesn’t always work out.”
Wilson defines his current musical mission as quixotic: Trying to get as many people as possible to listen to Black Beauty as an album in an era of singles, song-sharing and streaming.
Wilson and Munson still sprinkle their Twilight Hours sets with a handful of Trip Shakespeare classics — tunes like “Drummer Like Me” (a song that predated Wilco’s “Heavy Metal Drummer” by two-plus decades) and, of course, “Toolmaster of Brainerd.” It keeps the experience fun for them. We’re guessing the crowd has no complaints.
“The best nights now are as good as they’ve ever been,” says Wilson. “There’s a lot of joy in the room.”
