PREMIERE Thin Lear, "Witness"

Out and about in the endless deluge of the elements with Thin Lear; photographed by Anna Rhody.

The life and death continuum are constructs that consume the mind. Either in conscious reflection or in the background of our unconscious; the subject of mortality and the finite components of our being are acutely conjured into our thoughts through life’s events, instances, and incidents. Being confronted with the fragility of all living things jolts us to a peculiar place in the present. The passage from the world of the living to the mystery that stands at the gates of perceived finality is an experience that is different for everybody.

These points of startling realization occur at various points in our lives. From moments of youth when witnessing the abstraction of abrupt endings that defy cognitive comprehension. To witnessing the vicious and uncompromising nature of a world that is far from fair. Witnessing the yin and the yang of a universe that giveth and taketh away. Witnessing the weird and morbid wonder that piques the curiosity of the what and whys behind the reasons that we, and other species, die. Witnessing what our feelings are in reactions and responses to the temporal stages that we dance upon in our own respective histories. New Jersey artist Matt Longo, otherwise known as Thin Lear, sings of all this and more on the debut of “Witness”.

Featured off the upcoming album Many Disappeared, it follows up “Silver Bridge” that takes inspiration from the 1967 collapse of the Point Pleasant Bridge in West Virginia. Keeping in step with motifs of meaningful meditations on the macabre, “Witness” further illustrates Matt’s knack for making mesmerizing pastorals of the morose and maudlin that are rooted in mortal transcendence. Thin Lear brings us to the places that give further meaning to the intersections of the living and the dead. The jarring points of shock, horror, and pain where the membranes between these dimensions are observed with mindful poetics arranged with melodies that strum toward captivatingly candid places.

In Matt’s own description of the creative process:

“I’ve always gravitated to bizarre tales to access my own feelings…”

Recorded with Matt Ross-Spang at Sam Phillips Recording Service in Memphis, "Witness" elegantly ascends upward to swim among the celestial clouds in an elevated production that floats above earth like an out of body experience. Matt Longo lyrically recalls a memory from second grade about the striking discovery of a dying cat, juxtaposed in the second verse about the loss of a nurturing figure that occurred many years later. The sweetly swaying rhythmic chords ride between the last rites of a feline's final breath, with the contrasting floral bloom that sprouts through the fertilized mulch of the earth's exhaustive expanses.

The light hearted arrangement presents lamentations as events of personal bereavement, the ways in which we shut down, and the ways those time-stopping moments become carved and crystalized deep into the memories of the mind and soul. Thin Lear explores the challenges of helping loved ones and adorable animals in those heavy moments. The traumatic difficulties in navigating the perplexing, and maddening helplessness that arrives with being met by severe situations that lay outside of our grasp of control. "Witness" wanders into the sleep paralysis-like nightmare feeling of hand-tied futility when face to face with the irreversible auspices of the inevitable. Thin Lear shatters the unrealistic myths of angelic heroics and saviorhood at the points, places, and times of witnessing the passing of life into the great unknown. Longo dearly skates through the looping onion spirals of grief with a wistful resignation that accepts the tears, and awe-stricken alterations that cannot be mended like some divine act of course reversing providence.

The visuals from Ali Aschman animates the song through images of fruits ripening, weather patterns, insects, animals, trees, people, and plants returning to the earth in cycles of life. The visuals turn in a clockwise motion as Longo pays tribute to the connective carnival of life that binds us all together in a harmonious, continuous cavalcade of changes that link us all in a shared cultural-anthropological ecology.

Thin Lear’s Matt Longo shared some reflective observances about “Witness”:

My friend and I came across a dying cat on the road. My friend was nonchalant, but I was utterly horrified. The incident is still a touchpoint for me, every time I come upon the same powerless feeling, whether it be the loss of a loved one, or the general anxiety that the veil between this world and the next is quite thin.

Regret sits at the heart of this song: regret at not having been able to verbalize the heartbreaking privilege it is to be there for someone who is about to leave this plane of existence. I think of the cat, of my grandfather, of every time I've stood, mouth agape, in awe and horror, staring at the end of existence — failing to really be engaged as a sounding board, as a witness for someone at the end.

Meditations on the precipice of mortality with Thin Lear; photographed by Anna Rhody.

This song is me reflecting on all those past opportunities where I could've had that role for people I care about. And I'm not beating myself up about it in the song, but hopefully just acknowledging the growing process of gradually getting more comfortable being present for someone in that way.

Thin Lear's album Many Disappeared arrives April 24 via First City Artists.

Catch the artist on the following spring dates:

April

25 | Holyoke, MA – De La Luz

26 | Catskill, NY – Avalon Lounge

29 | New Haven, CT – Stella Blues

May

6 | NYC (release show) – Night Club 101

7 | Providence, RI – Getties at Fete Music Hall

8 | Somerville, MA – Union Tavern

9 | Portland, ME – Blue Portland Maine

10 | Dover, NH – Auspicious Brew

12 | Rochester, NY – Bar Bad Ending

13 | Buffalo, NY – Area 54

14 | Pittsburgh, PA – Poetry Lounge

16 | Philadelphia, PA – Abyssinia

21 | Bethlehem, PA – Apport Used Books

23 | Baltimore, MD – Holy Frijoles

24 | Charlottesville, VA – Superfly Brewing

26 | Richmond, VA – The Camel

28 | Nashville, TN – venue TBC

29 | Memphis, TN – Lamplighter Lounge

30 | Knoxville, TN – Blue Plate Special (morning show)