With gentle background vocals and gentle guitars lapping at the shores, ‘The Long Goodbye’ from ollo’s Alex Crowfoot under the name The Nethered is a fifties-flavoured widescreen epic: easy and languid music that bursts with a melancholic ray of sunshine. We are honoured to premiere this luscious track on Backseat Mafia.
‘The Long Goodbye’ seems to float on a bed of air with a sense of yearning. The melancholic sheen does not define the track, however: there is embedded a spark of hope. Crowfoot says of the track:
I wanted to talk about queer people in history who were unable to be with the person they loved. I thought about how much love must have been lost. Although it’s a story of two people who couldn’t be together, I don’t see this as a sad song but one of acceptance and understanding.
Their friendship will always be present in the landscape around them,” Crowfoot elaborates. “For the rural farm workers I imagine these characters to be, there really weren’t many options. I remember hearing stories of peoples’ grandfathers who had only ever been to a few other local villages – they’d never been to a city. While fictional, the relationship in the songs is based on my feelings for my best friend when I was eighteen.
The style is hard to define: there is a vintage feel with the easy style and delicate melodies, a Burt Bacharach suaveness and Jarvis Cocker delivery: something from another era yet modern and vibrant.
‘The Long Goodbye’ is out on Monday, 29 August through all the usual downloading/streaming sites.
It is the first single off the album ‘Lost Songs’ due out on 4 October 2022 and the third in a trilogy set in the late 1800s. ‘The Long Goodbye’ is the result of a collaboration with Sydney singer songwriter Liz Martin. Crowfoot explains:
The album is called Lost Songs and in a way this is a lost song with a different meaning. In 2012, Liz and I began talking about a collaboration. I moved to London and we sent each other a few ideas. Due to circumstances, I was unable to progress with much music in London and they got left behind. It felt right to revisit a few of these ‘lost’ ideas and one result is ‘The Long Goodbye’ which features Liz on guitar, keyboard and vocals.
There are clearly more wonderful things on the way.
Feature Photograph: Lars Chresta
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