Long Range Hustle: Used To Call
Mellow vocals, piano, and harmonies are featured on a radio-friendly cut.
By Kerry Doole
Long Range Hustle - Used To Call (Independent): Last week, this Toronto five-piece indie-rock outfit announced its new album, I am alive, but only if you say I am, would be released digitally on Nov. 12, with vinyl and CD formats coming out next month.
Along with that news came a new single, Used To Call. "The track explores the realization that when someone you love cuts themselves out of your life, no matter how big that missing piece is, you have to grow to fill it, or you’ll never be whole again,” says band member Jay Foster, on the new single. “It’s about healing. It’s hard to let go of your favourite person. But they took your keys back, you changed the Netflix password and they don’t call you anymore. In the end, if someone doesn’t want the same things that you want, you have to let them float away.”
The tune is built around and the mellow voice and piano work of Foster, with the vocal harmonies of his comrades fleshing out the somewhat retro sound nicely.
For the single and the album, Long Range Hustle reunited with acclaimed Scottish producer, Tony Doogan (Wintersleep, Snow Patrol), in the summer of 2020 at The Tragically Hip's storied Bathouse studio in Kingston. “No one lives in a vacuum,” says guitarist/vocalist Paul Brogee, on the album. “We are all products of our communities, and of our interactions within them. This new album is a deeply personal one, exploring how (for good or ill) our own visions of ourselves are so frequently defined by our connections to others.”
“The stories told are framed by our interactions with others, or lack-there-of. There are difficult late-night conversations, persistent imaginary friends, vacant living rooms, locked doors, and ex-lovers seen in new colours through the lens of a camera. As each song works towards its climax, it also works towards vulnerability and clarity. And this is where you come in. For the music only exists when it is listened to. The stories only matter when they are heard. Like it says on the front of the album… I am alive, but only if you say I am.”
Following a Sept. 24 show at Beachwood Hollow Resort in Tweed, ON, LRH play a seven-city tour of Quebec and Ontario, Nov. 12-21, including a hometown Horseshoe show on Nov. 18. Full itinerary here.
Links
Publicity: Indoor Recess
Management: Indoor Recess - Aven Hoffarth
Booking: Paquin Artists Agency - Julien Paquin, Sarah Litt
