On his new album, guitarist Matthew Stevens looked inward for inspiration and found results that transformed into a record of swirling, kaleidoscopic wonder that arrives fully realized with profound thought. The latest single from the record, "Hazy," was the first song written by the artist in a year and a half, after much soul searching and hardships. According to the press release,
"Hazy" was [written] right in the middle of a divorce, a move, starting a new job in academia — just facing more uncertainty than I’d ever known," reveals Stevens. "What caught my attention immediately was how it felt like waking up and returning to my own artistic practice. The music itself was different because so much had changed, and so had I. In a lot of ways, it was the bellwether for the language of the record. I was influenced by time spent in Rio working on a Milton Nascimento project with Milton and Esperanza Spalding, and his music just gets inside you — there’s no resisting it. That hyper-melodicism, those adventurous harmonies that never feel self-conscious, all carried by a feel so deep it makes you squint — that energy definitely found its way into this song and the album as a whole."
The track also features Josh Johnson (a member of SML, Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet, as well as the producer on Flea's wonderful new album) on saxophone and his lush tones help to embellish the track, elevating its features and helping to blur the standards to create something rather transfixing. It's a soothing and meditative piece that flows with delicacy, but it's also a vibrant number, full of life and the persistence to carry on.
Matthew Stevens is out May 8.
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