Sink into the gorgeous new song—and hypnotic video—”highlighting the nature of transitions” from Matt Gaydar’s alt-indie folk project
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When writing our stories, we place emphasis on bookmarks, milestones and decisive moments of action. The beginnings, endings and extremes. But much of life is lived in the limbo… the questions, rather than the answers… the moments in between as we awkwardly straddle two worlds while living and learning and growing and just trying to figure our shit—and ourselves—out.
(Exhibit A: uh, the last ~10 months.)
We’re all familiar with these feelings of confusion, contradictions and the strange sensation of moving forward into the future while missing—or mourning—the past, and this concept of transition… from state to state, season to season… is illustrated in astoundingly beautiful fashion by Glenn Echo, whose phenomenal new song and video “Hearth” I’m incredibly thrilled to premiere here.
Ahead of the release, Matt Gaydar—the artist behind the project—filled me in on the story behind the song, offering some thoughts and questions that, while undeniably evergreen, feel extremely of-the-moment as well.
“‘Hearth’ is about missing someone after being separated. It seems especially relevant now, when we all are fatigued by isolation, since we crave those simple social interactions that, in the past, were so nonchalant. The song itself highlights the nature of transitions, trying to bridge two separate ideas through a mixture of two separate tempos. Similar to transitory seasons like fall and spring, where sometimes it feels like a state of limbo between two impossible sides of a spectrum. In our different stages of life, how do we change over as well? After the abundant summer, how do we shift to winter? How do relationships grow and evolve? Sometimes we are pulled towards certain places or people, but that inevitably leaves behind other people and places as well. How can we hold both opposites in the same hand?”
And as visual accompaniment, there’s the gorgeous (and very soothing) video featuring the human touch against a natural backdrop; a series of shadows and fluttering hands over sky, rocks, water, leaves and logs.
“The idea for the video came in relation to the other music videos for the singles from the album. The first, for ‘Overwhelm’ was a dance with symmetry on a macro level, two people moving on a mountaintop. The video for ‘Moon Seems Lost’ featured a kaleidoscopic lens of one person dancing, making mirrored scenes. For ‘Hearth,’ I wanted to keep narrowing the viewpoint, to the micro level, by focusing on just one element, the hands. The nature of the three frames alludes to symmetry, but it is not exact. And similarly to the union of seasons, I wanted the verse and chorus to inhabit different atmospheres, yet be tied together.”
Enjoy the beauty of this song and video, y’all—
Here’s to the spaces in between.
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Follow Glenn Echo at @glennecho and add the artist to your Spotify playlists and find all things Glenn Echo at glennecho.com!
Feature image provided by the artist.