Artist: Thin Lear
Hometown: Queens, New York
Song: “Your Family”
Album: Wooden Cave
Release Date: July 24, 2020
Label: EggHunt Records
In Their Words: “There are certain songs that I need to emotionally warm myself up for before I play them live. I’ll work myself into a particular frame of mind in order to emote properly. But this one is different. With this song, I can pick the opening chord, and suddenly I’m transported back to where I was when I wrote it. It just takes hold of me, and it’s always a pretty cathartic experience.
“The song was written for a family member who was at the end of a long life, and he simply wanted to rejoin his partner in whatever it is that exists beyond here. I think, out of every song I’ve written, this one is probably the most misunderstood. People might hear it and think it’s purely a song of despair, but I really don’t see it in that way. It’s certainly sad, but in the very last stanza, there’s a loving energy there that’s embracing this person at their end.
“When we were recording the song in the studio, with the string quartet and the whole group, I could tell some of the players were getting a bit emotional by the end of it (myself included). And I remember afterwards, some of us were talking about the respective loved ones we’d been thinking about as we were playing. It was a wonderful experience. We only did two takes of it, and this was the first one. It just arrived when we needed it to.” — Thin Lear
Photo credit: Shervin Lainez
