Track x Track! LINGER Toward the Sun LP

Linger – Toward the Sun LP is available on Spotify.

by Walter Price

The debut album ‘Toward the Sun’ from Swedish songwriters Tony Lind and Tomas Juto’s new band LINGER is as vast as it is accomplished. Lind and Juto, as you may remember from roots-pop outfit Billy Momo have taken a familiar, to them, approach to crafting the 11 tracks. Without a solid blueprint, they would find a studio, ask their musician mates to come around and then let the songs unfold organically.

So organically, that some tracks were wholly birthed on the spot, as the songwriters remember, “The song ‘Put the love in revolution’ is not even just a first take (which in itself is rare and exciting), but in fact, the take you hear on the album is the very first time we even attempt to play the song at all! It just so happened that Emil (the recording engineer for the session) asked if he should record our rehearsal, and we said ‘Sure!’, thinking that someone might improvise something useful we could playback and redo later. But we just jumped into it, and when the song was finished we kind of looked at each other and shrugged: ‘I think that’s a keeper, boys!’ It was a very special moment. Grand piano and vocals were overdubbed later, everything else is that first take.”

Sonically, this LP is a bit of everything. Obviously roots, but also interwoven hints of soul, prog, psych, and ethereal pop. Like Floyd, Pete Gabriel, Uncle Tupelo and the before mentioned Billy Momo have collided to form a whole new sound. A sound that cradles the weighty lyrics that aim to move you. And move you, they will.

This set is not without its heartache though. Again, with sorrow heavy on their hearts, the duo laments, ”While we were writing the songs for this album, our father was diagnosed with cancer, and within a month of being diagnosed, he was gone. Though he never had the chance to hear these songs, those final weeks we spent with him definitely left their mark on our writing. We took the name LINGER from a line in Spike Lee’s ’25th hour’: “I haven’t had a drink in two years, but I’ll have one with you, one last whisky with my boy. Take our time with it, taste the barley, let it linger. And then I’ll go.”

Loss and the love of crafting music are palpable throughout this socially aware set and Lind and Juto went Track by Track, so you and I the listeners and new fans could get a small glimpse inside this brilliant debut album.

Toward the Sun

Insurgents

A short instrumental piece to set the tone for what’s to come.

Put the ’love’ in ’revolution’

The struggle against ignorance, prejudice and bigotry. We can’t afford to be silent. If we don’t speak out, they win. But standing together in solidarity and compassion, we shall indeed overcome.

Toward the Sun

A song about knowing you are rapidly dying from cancer, holding on to this life with everything you have.

We don’t talk about it

A couple staying together although there is no love, intimacy, or connection left in the relationship, simply going through the motions because accepting defeat is too uncomfortable and scary.

Everything that you’ve got

A love song about being done with playing games and fake appearances, wishing for the new relationship to be open, honest, and real.

DeLorean

About regret, and disillusion, wishing one could go back in time to ’make it right’, knowing that your own mistakes put you where you are.

Den of Iniquity

This is the Voice of Privilege and Control speaking, the moral panic stormtroopers who above everything else fear people living their lives the way they want to, loving whoever they love openly and freely, and doing whatever they want with and/or to their own body, all without hurting anyone else, and without being policed by anyone else. Surely, we can’t have that, right?

Long live the Light

About the hypocrisy and insanity of the gun laws in the U.S., specifically inspired by George Zimmerman’s cold-blooded murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, but we hear new names of victims of this madness every week on the news.

Devour

Describing the struggle with depression, and trying to change your circumstances, while your self-hate keeps holding you down, and all you wish is for a new, brighter day to finally devour the past.

Ain’t that nice

The Irish legend of Margorie McCall, the woman whose gravestone says ‘Lived once, buried twice’… this was the first song ever written specifically for LINGER.

Change

About realizing one’s privilege, wishing to reinvent and improve oneself for the betterment of our society. We can do this, people.

LINGER Toward the Sun

+ Everything that you´ve got, the film, directed by Jonna Laurin

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“It started in a very unassuming way. Tomas just sent me some ideas he had worked on, and we started collaborating. The songs just started pouring out, and it didn’t take long before we knew we had something quite special brewing, so we decided to make an album.” – Tony Lind

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