M. Byrd is a German-born and based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalists and producer, who can trace the origins of music career, and his passion for music to when he was three: A very young Byrd used to play drums in front of the TV. Eventually, he found his dad’s guitar. Encouraged by a teacher, he picked up electric guitar and attended countless roots jam sessions at local joints. Influenced by Alice Coltrane, Tom Petty, Elliott Smith and David Lynch, Byrd began writing his own material.
The German-born and-based artist turned heads back in 2020 with the release of “Mountain” and “Morning Sun,” tracks that amassed millions of streams and praise from Ones to Watch, Earmilk, Atwood Magazine and several others while firmly cementing his sound and approach: Intensely personal songwriting paired with shoegazer-inspired textures and pop-leaning accessibility.
At the end of 2020, Byrd and producer Eugen Koop holed up in Detmold, Germany in a WWII-era British Corps squash hall-turned recording studio, where they worked on The Seed, the German artist’s forthcoming, full-length debut, an effort that sees Byrd personally playing guitar, synths and bass. The album’s material reportedly draws you in to inspire your own evolution. As Byrd says ““When you listen to the album, I hope you feel like you can grow with me. Maybe you’ll find confidence in yourself. We’re planting this thought with The Seed.
So far I’ve written about two singles off the album:
- “Over You/Over Me,” a song centered around Byrd’s plaintive and balmy vocal floating over a textured, shoegazer-like soundscape paired with a motorik groove and enormous hooks. Much like his previously released work, the new single is rooted in a bright, hopeful sense of the future. “I dreamt there were snakes all over my apartment,” Byrd recalls. “A snake is a symbol for drastic change in your life and you’re repressing it. There’s a lot of change for me. I’m starting to be a full-time musician. There’s still a pandemic. I tried to dress up this darkness nicely. I talked to a friend who is into interpreting dreams, and she said that snakes in dreams meant that I was going through a profound change in my life. I remembered a quote I once read in an essay by Freud: ‘A dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the restraints of matter.”
- Album title track, “The Seed,” an anthemic, 120 Minutes-era MTV alt rock song centered around Byrd’s uncanny knack for crafting rousingly anthemic hooks with earnest, deeply personal songwriting paired with a lush, Toad the Wet Sprocket meets Starsailor-like arrangement. “We realized then that nothing will ever be, no matter how far away you feel from something that’s happening in the world, independent from the suffering out there,” the German singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist explains. “It was a hard realization but we needed to figure out a way to deal with it. Listening to the whole album reminded me of holding a seed in my hands. It felt like the start of something and symbolized birth in times of chaos. The song and the album, we decided, had to be called nothing more and nothing less – The Seed.”
The Seed‘s third and latest singles, “Outside of Town” is a slow-burning, 80s-styled ballad built around glistening guitars, atmospheric synths and Byrd’s plaintive delivery paired with his unerring knack for crafting enormous, arena rock friendly hooks. While arguably the most retro-inspired of The Seed‘s released singles, the song is inspired by contemporary events.
“I wrote ‘Outside Of Town’ a few days after meeting a friend who had to flee from a war with his daughter,” Byrd explains. “It tells his story in a fictional city that is surrounded by desert and war, sustaining itself with big walls and what little water they have left.” M. Byrd adds, “every time I play the song, it reminds me of how I admire people who are fighting for a better life for themselves and their families. All of us could be in the situation of having to look past the borders of our homes, and every one of us should play a part in helping the people who are willing to go through so much suffering to provide a safer place for their family and children.“
The Seed is slated a June 16, 2023 release through Nettwerk Music Group.