The range of color and sensation For Breakfast brings across in their new just-over-three-minute track “Longer Than Spring” is impressive as hell. The best part is I didn’t catch that until my third or fourth listen. For Breakfast isn’t setting out to impress us with how much theory they know, or how many pieces of music flash they can shove into a turducken and call that a song, as is often the peril of many-hyphenate bands. The song is absolutely central. Case in point: their new single, “Longer Than Spring”.
The non-music theory nerds may want to skip this paragraph, but good God damn, I love a I-Imaj7-I7-IV progression. So many iconic songs use it and it’s honestly insane that it doesn’t show up more. Norah Jones, The Beatles, a bunch of jazz and blues standards, Bob Dylan; the list goes on. Part of what makes this progression work is its circular nature, the way it plays with dissonance and different modes all in one span of chord changes, inviting the composer to play in a way that can be hard with more conventional changes. And for those of us taking solos, it’s like being set loose on a playground with ADHD medication and a six pack of Coca-Cola.
But the thing about Longer Than Spring is that it manages to juggle a few different genres in one piece of music, all built around this one progression. The choral opening of horns is meditative and gorgeous, and the vocal delivery is enchanting, with just enough reverb to make you wonder if we’re in church or maybe a canyon. If this were in the soundtrack of a film, we’d be two-thirds of the way through the movie and preparing to cry. Honestly this song could be double in length and I’d have no complaints. I hope, when they play this live, it turns into a ten-minute long thing, so we can hear them search out every nook and cranny of those changes.
Take a listen to “Longer Than Spring” below.
Written by Willow Stonebeck
