Matthew Ryan opens Hustle Up Starlings with the line: “Everything sucks as bad as it gets.” Which felt less like a lyric and more like a national mood. But Ryan swears it wasn’t designed as a political throat-punch. “I didn’t think about that line in context,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to start the record with cynicism—it’s just where the song started. You hope people hang around long enough to hear the hope that comes after.”
That hope, though quiet, runs through the record like a heartbeat under bruised skin. Ryan’s been writing about the American condition for years—characters stuck between idealism and exhaustion, searching for grace in a rusted-out car. “Every one of us is in the midst of a great battle,” he says. “Nobody’s getting a free pass. That’s not confined to economics or class. Everyone’s got wolves at their door.”
It’s an outlook equal parts compassion and realism—the kind of hard-earned empathy that made Ryan a cult hero among fans of Springsteen, Westerberg, and Lucinda Williams. “If we can get past the idea that we’re separated by skin or class,” he says, “something more beautiful is possible. I really believe music has a humanitarian cause. It gave me a way through the darkness when I was younger.”
He’s not interested in pretending life is tidy. “All these songs have happy endings,” he says, “but they don’t lie about the thorns.” Which explains why Hustle Up Starlings sounds like a triumph disguised as a tragedy: rousing, tender, and scarred.
One song, “Battle Born,” plays like a prayer for perseverance and features a roll call of heroes—Joe Strummer, Lucinda Williams, Paul Westerberg, Chrissie Hynde, Tom Waits. “Those names are my compass,” Ryan says. “They’re the voices that make me believe my wildest dream is possible.” He credits an old mentor, photographer Jack Spencer, with pushing him to see the point of it all. “He told me, ‘You have to believe your work can inspire people to invest in themselves with as much beauty as you invest in your work.’ That was hard to hear. It felt like arrogance. But he was right.”
For Ryan, those heroes are antidotes to cynicism. “Tom Waits taught me more about romance than anyone,” he says. “It’s real as the dirt on the wrench in his workshop.”
Then there’s Brian Fallon. The Gaslight Anthem frontman had appeared as a guest on one of Ryan’s earlier tracks before producing Hustle Up Starlings, and the chemistry was instant. “Sometimes you meet someone and it’s like finding your blood brother,” Ryan says. “That’s Brian.” Their friendship arrived right on schedule. “He couldn’t have come into my life at a more important time,” Ryan says. “Faith, luck, whatever it is—something was going on.”
Ryan laughs about how Fallon may have finally fulfilled a bit of musical prophecy. “Years ago, Mark Knopfler came to see me play,” he recalls. “He told a friend, ‘If Ryan ever finds his Mike Campbell, it’s over.’ That always stuck with me. And when I met Brian, I thought—oh, there he is.”
The connection reignited something Ryan hadn’t felt since his earliest basement-band days in Delaware. “It’s the first time since I was a teenager that I’ve felt that bond with a guitar player,” he says. “It’s like finding your musical soulmate twenty years later.”
That spirit—half punk grit, half bruised optimism—runs through Hustle Up Starlings. The songs sound alive, like they’re trying to outrun the wreckage. Ryan admits it’s not escapist music. “I don’t really offer that,” he says. “I’m not the guy you go to for a beach soundtrack. But I do want the songs to comfort and to lift somebody up. That’s all I care about.”
He may undersell it, but that’s exactly what the album does: it wrestles with despair and wins by knockout in the final round. It’s music that reminds you survival itself can be heroic.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the lead single "(I Just Died) Like an Aviator" below.
