Matthew Squires is a singer-songwriter based in Austin, Texas. Since 2010, he and his ever-evolving band have released seven albums which have been met with increasing critical acclaim.
In the three years following the release of his last album, Squires has split his time between a monastic Buddhist community in rural east Texas and his hometown of Austin, where he has been hard at work on his new album, Visions of America, which will be released on August 30th, 2019.
Laden with literary and cultural references ranging from Melville and Shiva to Donald Duck, Visions of America is, at least in part, aimed at uncovering the diverse and complex roots of American consciousness. More so than any of Squires’ previous records, he seems to want to engage to some degree with the social and cultural turmoil within which he is creating. As usual, Squires doesn’t offer any easy answers. He writes from an enigmatic inner landscape, trying his best to make sense of who, where, when, and why he is. Demonstrating his mastery over the craft of songwriting, he offers lines that are at times as funny as they are heartbreaking.
Aesthetically, the record is a bit of a shift for him, as well. Whereas his previous work was reliably idiosyncratic and ambitious in its production, this record – perhaps in an effort to stay true to its Americana theme – has a much more measured and somewhat traditional approach at times. By far the shortest album of his career at a mere nine songs, Visions of America is a lean record, lacking excess, where every line counts.
Glide is proud to premiere the official video for the title track (below) – a song that captures the flawless indie dream pop of Luna and Elephant 6 Recording Company. Squires captures the essence of true indie-songwriting its most organic and melodic flourishes, mastering stunning simplicity with introspective lyrics.
“I was trying to write in a way which wasn’t pouring more fuel onto the cultural and social fire we’re all surrounded by,” says Squires. “With this whole album, and this song in particular, I was rereading Walt Whitman, Emerson, and other foundations of American consciousness and aiming roughly in the direction of their target, which is to say that I wanted to affirm the whole tangled mess of our fragile experiment in democracy, in spite of the ugliness we are forced to recognize in our own nature.”
Photo by Erik Gatling
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