Photo courtesy of Matt Smith
Longevity can change an artist’s relationship with the present. After more than 45 years of writing, recording and performing music, Matt Smith has witnessed styles disappear and return, cultural conversations shift, and periods of optimism give way to uncertainty before changing course once again. Experience does not necessarily provide answers to any of it. What it can provide is perspective.
That perspective sits at the center of …this is not ok…, Smith’s 20th studio album and a nine-song collection shaped by his response to a world he sees becoming increasingly divided. Rather than revisiting the milestones of an extensive career, the Austin-based guitarist, songwriter and producer turns outward, examining the emotional consequences of polarization, isolation, instability and the fading ability to find common ground.
The title carries an unmistakable sense of alarm, but the music is more nuanced than the phrase might initially suggest. Smith is troubled by what he sees around him, yet …this is not ok… is neither an extended protest nor a vehicle for indiscriminate anger. Its most persistent impulse is compassion.
“I care very deeply for the world and its people,” Smith has said. “I knew I had to express what I was feeling, but not in a way that added to the fracture.”
It is an important qualification, and one that establishes the album’s point of view. Smith does not approach division by adding another argument to an already crowded conversation. He is less interested in telling an audience what conclusion to reach than in considering what is lost when disagreement becomes hostility and people begin to see one another primarily through opposing positions.
The questions are cultural, but Smith repeatedly brings them back to human scale.
On “World Is a Wheel,” the album begins with the recurring nature of change itself. History moves forward, but certain patterns have a habit of returning: conflict, uncertainty, renewal, disillusionment. For a musician whose career stretches across more than four decades, that circularity has an added dimension. Smith is not observing upheaval from the perspective of an artist encountering it for the first time. He has spent enough years moving through musical and cultural change to understand that every supposedly unprecedented moment exists somewhere within a longer continuum.
That sense of history becomes more immediate on “Cry for America,” where Smith addresses contemporary national division without turning the song into a partisan manifesto. There is disappointment in the writing and an unmistakable anxiety about the direction of public life, but he leaves the listener room to consider the subject rather than demanding allegiance to a particular conclusion.
The distinction is significant. Political songwriting can easily become an extension of the argument it seeks to document. Smith instead appears interested in the emotional condition beneath the argument—the exhaustion, fear and estrangement that remain after opposing sides have finished speaking past one another.
“Orphans” deepens that concern by moving away from the language of national division and toward vulnerability. Ideas of abandonment and belonging give the album a more intimate emotional dimension, shifting attention from cultural forces to the people affected by them. In doing so, Smith reinforces one of the record’s most persistent ideas: societies may fracture collectively, but the consequences are ultimately experienced individually.
Against that backdrop, “Level Ground” emerges as an important counterweight. The song reaches for the possibility of coexistence without pretending that differences can simply be wished away. Smith’s idea of common ground is not uniformity. It is the more difficult proposition that people can remain fundamentally different while still recognizing dignity in one another.
That sentiment could serve as the philosophical center of …this is not ok…. Smith is willing to acknowledge what has deteriorated, but he seems unwilling to believe that deterioration must be permanent.
Elsewhere, the album moves between the public and the personal. “A Life In Love” brings another degree of intimacy to the collection, while “From the Ashes” closes the record with an image of survival and renewal. The sequencing creates a subtle but meaningful arc. Smith begins with cycles and instability, passes through division, isolation and the search for connection, and eventually arrives somewhere more restorative.
The optimism is deliberately measured. Nothing about the album suggests that Smith believes difficult problems disappear through good intentions. Instead, hope operates as a refusal to regard cynicism as sophistication or despair as the inevitable consequence of paying attention.
The music supporting those ideas reflects the breadth of Smith’s career. Americana, blues, folk, roots, soul and rock coexist throughout the record, not as stylistic exercises but as parts of a vocabulary accumulated over decades. Smith has spent much of his musical life crossing boundaries, and …this is not ok… continues that approach without forcing itself neatly into a single category.
Recorded between Austin and New York, the album was produced by Smith and assembled with musicians and vocalists from both cities. Julie Slim, Alex Ruiz, Joe Morales, Guy Forsythe, Ange Kogutz, Tony Perrino, David Webb, Hank Soto, Greg Holt and Ernie Durawa contribute to the project, bringing a collective dimension to material fundamentally concerned with the difficulty—and necessity—of human connection.
The geography is appropriate. New York and Austin represent significant chapters in Smith’s creative life, and the album draws from communities associated with both.
His professional history reaches considerably further. Across more than 45 years, Smith has performed with, opened for or recorded alongside artists including B.B. King, Sheryl Crow, Trey Anastasio, Gregg Allman, Los Lobos, Johnny Winter, Buddy Guy, Adrian Legg, Ed Gerhard and Portishead. The range is striking, moving across blues, rock, acoustic music and alternative culture while illustrating how difficult Smith’s own career has been to contain within a single musical definition.
Performance, however, represents only part of his work. Smith has also established himself as a producer, recording engineer, author and educator. His teaching career included serving as a senior instructor with the National Guitar Workshop, and after relocating from New York to Texas, he continued working with developing musicians through Austin’s 6 String Ranch, the studio and creative facility he co-founded.
Those decades of experience inevitably inform …this is not ok…, but the album does not rely upon them as a selling point. There is little sense of an artist attempting to remind listeners of everything he has accomplished. If anything, the opposite is true. Smith uses experience to strip away some of the need for demonstration.
Twenty albums into a recording career, technical credibility is no longer something he needs to establish. The more interesting question is what an artist chooses to communicate once there is nothing left to prove.
For Smith, the answer appears to be found in connection.
That makes …this is not ok… particularly suited to the cultural atmosphere surrounding its creation. Modern public life offers no shortage of platforms for certainty. Opinions arrive instantly, disagreement becomes content, and outrage can move through a conversation faster than understanding. Smith does not attempt to stand outside that reality. His album exists because he is affected by it.
What distinguishes the project is his refusal to replicate its language.
The title may sound confrontational, but the songs themselves repeatedly turn confrontation toward contemplation. Smith acknowledges fear without amplifying panic, division without romanticizing conflict, and disappointment without allowing cynicism to dominate the record. It is an approach that feels less concerned with winning an argument than preserving the possibility of dialogue.
There is something fitting about that perspective arriving this far into Smith’s career. Younger artists are often expected to define themselves through declarations—who they are, what they oppose, where they belong. Longevity can produce another kind of confidence: the willingness to leave some questions unresolved.
…this is not ok… does not offer a comprehensive answer to the world it examines. Nor does it pretend that a collection of songs can reconcile political or cultural divisions that extend far beyond music. Its ambition is simultaneously smaller and more personal: to create enough space for reflection that certainty does not immediately overwhelm empathy.
Smith has spent more than 45 years learning what music can do. On his 20th studio album, he also seems acutely aware of what it cannot.
A song cannot force people onto common ground. It cannot erase disagreement or guarantee understanding. But it can interrupt the noise long enough for someone to listen differently.
For an album born from concern about a world struggling to hear itself, that possibility may be precisely the point.
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