Thin Lear

With his sad and powerful songs made under the Thin Lear banner, Queens-based singer/songwriter Matt Longo evokes the essence of masterful artists such as Leonard Cohen, Sufjan Stevens, Emmylou Harris, and the like. His classically crafted chamber folk songs explored death, despair, and hope on his 2020 debut, Wooden Cave.
Longo was born and raised in Long Island, and by the 2010s he had established himself as part of New York’s independent scene. He sang for various bands and released several albums under his own name before taking up the Thin Lear mantle in 2016 with a self-titled six-song EP. The songs he recorded as Thin Lear were slightly more orchestrated and chamber-leaning than his earlier solo material. Longo worked for years towards his first proper album, assembling a cast of musicians from New York’s jazz and indie circles to help him bring his songs to life. After toiling over the tracks until they were refined to perfection, Thin Lear’s debut album was finally complete in 2019; titled Wooden Cave, it was released in July of 2020 on Egghunt Records. ~ Fred Thomas