Walter Martin Shares Uneasy New Single 'Easter'

Today, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Walter Martin shared a new single from his forthcoming album called "Easter." The track is the latest to release from The Bear, the sixth solo album from the beloved Walkmen co-founder set to release on March 25th through his imprint Ile Flottante Music. A somber and uneasy song, "Easter" evokes the anxiety and uncertainty the past few years have brought for us all.

"Sean O'Brien, the lap steel player on 'Easter,' described the song as having a 'high-lonesome' sound which seems right to me - though I'm not exactly sure what that means," Walter told Flood Magazine who featured the track. "To me, 'Easter' is another autobiographical story-song. There's a lot going on lyrically and I think there are a few ways to absorb it, but if I had to boil it down, I'd say it's a song about feeling ill-equipped. Sometimes I feel like the fact that I was in a touring rock band for so much of my adulthood stunted my growth a bit. When you are in a rock band and you don't have children, you are essentially a kid - well at least that was my experience, and it lasted until I was about thirty-nine. So now to find myself trying to navigate such a terrifying and broken world, it's scary. I know it's scary for a lot of people. It's a pretty strange time to be alive and raising children, but I do my best."

The lead single and title track "The Bear" is also out now. Inspired by the myth of a blind bear that is rumored to roam his neighborhood, it tells a story about the past, the present, and the future brought to life with humor and real-life detail. It was featured by Brooklyn Vegan, Under The Radar, and Stereogum who stated "Ever since the Walkmen embarked on their hiatus, several of the band's members have had prolific solo careers. But none of them have churned out music at quite the pace as Walter Martin."

The Bear is a heartbreaking collection of bold autobiographical story-songs that Martin described as "the kind of album I've been building towards for my entire career." Written during last year's cold, bleak winter in an old 1800s schoolhouse in upstate New York that Martin converted into a studio, The Bear is an unexpectedly warm and inviting collection, one focused on growth and family and the power of human connection.

The songs are gentle and engaging, with spacious arrangements often centered around fingerpicked electric guitars and romantic piano flourishes from Oscar-nominated Minari composer Emile Mosseri. Martin's idiosyncratic vocals are similarly amiable, delivered with the loose, casual demeanor of an old friend who's pleased as punch you decided to stop by.

Like much of Martin's catalog, The Bear is chock full of delightfully vivid imagery and fueled by an infectious love of language, but this time around the lyrics leave more to the imagination, stepping away from explicit narrative forms in favor of more abstract and intuitive streams of consciousness. What ultimately emerges is a lifetime's worth of deeply personal snapshots and reflections all jumbled together, a family photo album dumped out on the floor and gathered back up into a swirl of moments and memories that manage to tell a million different stories all at once.

In addition to Mosseri, The Bear features an all-star cast of musicians including guitarist Harrison Whitford (Phoebe Bridgers, Matt Berninger), drummer Josh Adams (Beck, Devendra Banhart), Eric D. Johnson (Bonny Light Horseman), frequent collaborator Josh Kaufman (Bonny Light Horseman, Hiss Golden Messenger, The National), and keyboardist/producer Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Craig Finn) who also mixed the album.

The resulting songs walk an artful line between folk intimacy and classical sophistication as they contemplate life, death, and everything in between. "I don't think I've had the nerve to be this honest, this autobiographical before," continued Martin. "But more than anything I've ever written, these songs explain who I am and why I make this stuff."

Listen to the new single here:

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