New from Matthew Squires and Sunk Coast, ‘Wing Song’ is out today, the 20th of March.
We’ve written extensively about Matthew Squires and his music over the past six years or so, and Squires himself first broke onto the scene back in 2012, releasing in that time nine albums and multitudinous singles.
Originally from Austin, Texas, where he gained for himself the reputation as “the best successor to Austin’s late great Daniel Johnson“, he recently relocated to Ithaca, New York State.
While at a silent zen meditation retreat, he was assigned Zach Totta, aka Sunk Coast as a roommate, and, when all silence was lifted on the final day, the pair hit it off in their shared love of music. A collaboration was born. Sunk Coast, meanwhile, had been releasing music under his own moniker, and producing and engineering for others, since 2015, and his indie sound was a perfect match for Squires’.
‘Wing Song’ is the pair’s first official collaboration, and hopefully the first of many. The lyrics were written while Squires was going through a Ralph Waldo Emerson phase, immersed in the writer’s essays, and lines such as the first verse,
“I’m gonna follow time right back to where it started
Where life and death combine, where nothing’s quite departed
And there I will taste all things distilled into a spirit
I’ll sprout myself some wings and then I’ll sing ‘til all can hear it”
And the first half of the third verse,
“Into a mossy tomb, we will venture with a lantern
We’ll find the inner womb with its ancient mystic pattern”
have a distinctly Emerson-like vibe to them, tapping into his transcendental philosophies and stylings.
Musically, ‘Wing Song’ is a genre-defying blend of psychedelia and folk pop: nostalgic and soothing, drawing the listener in, trancelike and meditative. It’s a song worth listening to several times – perhaps in a darkened room, through headphones, with no external interruptions.
Listen to ‘Wing Song’ below, and let us know what you think! You can find out more about Matthew Squires and his music online on Bandcamp, Twitter, YouTube, and Spotify.
