Last we heard from Kyle Field, front man of Little Wings, visual artist, and expert surfer, was on 2011’s Black Grass. Since then, Field spent most of his time either traveling or in the Bay Area, working periodically on a batch of songs that would eventually become his latest album, LAST. It was in the middle of recording when Field reportedly fell into a deep depression, an unexpected personal turn that has resulted in a work with a much darker side than anticipated.
“Bonus Fog” must have been written during this period. The track marries Field’s austere folk with a dragging hopelessness that’s equal parts devastating and sublime. Here, the protagonists of the story are stranded, trapped on an increasingly smaller area of land as they witness the world around them getting swallowed by the tide and blown away by the wind. The feelings evoked are anything but optimistic, with foundational truths uprooted and human impressions rendered obsolete by nature: “Another dusting of the lens through which we’ll try to make out any movement, any finger from the air to shake/ Tracing our outlines on the sand some wind will take again/ The dampest footprints melt back into what they were back then.” Throughout, Field is lethargically strumming on a nylon, verse after verse, not so much telling a story as revealing an unfortunate ending to a much larger one.
“Bonus Fog” is a reminder of how our emotions can be all-consuming from an individual vantage yet entirely transient in the face of larger forces, good or bad. Sure, it’s a bleak outlook (one that’s tempered elsewhere on the album), but it’s executed in utterly gorgeous fashion.
LAST is out February 5 on Field’s own RAD imprint, with distribution by Marriage Records.
• Kyle Field: http://www.kyledraws.com
• Rad: http://www.marriagerecs.com/shop2/524/_rad-distro_
• Marriage: http://www.marriagerecs.com
More about: Little Wings
