Tag: Thin Lear Death in a Field

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

 

Over the first half of this year, I’ve written a bit about the Queens-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Matt Longo, the creative mastermind behind Thin Lear, a solo recording project largely inspired by the likes of Todd Rundgren, Shuggie Otis and Kate Bush.  Longo’s latest Thin Lear album Wooden Cave is slated for release later this year, and as you may recall, album singles “The Guesthouse,” and “Death in a Field” were deeply indebted to different styles of 70s rock.

Wooden Cave‘s third and latest single is the delicate and almost spectral “Your Family.” Centered around a folk-like arrangement of twinkling piano, strummed guitar and Longo’s plaintive falsetto, the song is imbued with an aching and inconsolable sense of loss. Much like its predecessors, the song reveals a heart-on-the-sleeve earnestness paired with a careful and deliberate craftsmanship that ends with a simple yet profound mantra of self-acceptance. “It’s an orchestral track that explores the aftermath of losing a partner, the ensuing self-imposed exile and the struggle to re-emerge whole again,” Longo says in press notes. 

 

 

 

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Earlier this year, I wrote about Matt Longo, a Queens-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, best known for his solo-recording project Thin Lear, which is largely inspired by the likes of Todd Rundgren, Shuggie Otis and Kate Bush — and “aims to craft lovingly homemade pop songs that sparkle and thump and unfurl deliciously.”

Now, as you may recall Longo’s forthcoming Thin Lear album Wooden Cave is slated for release later this year, and the album’s first single “The Guesthouse,” while sounding as though it could have been released in 1974 or so featured a propulsive and angular groove was centered around a spastic arrangement meant to evoke the claustrophobia of its narrator.

Wooden Cave‘s second and latest single, the lush and wistful “Death in a Field” possesses a widescreen, cinematic quality paired with intimate and introspective songwriting — and as a result, the song sonically is a seamless synthesis of 70s AM rock, country and folk, complete with a deliberate attention to craft.