On August 30th, Matthew Squires will release his new album, Visions of America. Surviving the Golden Age is excited to premiere the album’s opening track, “American Fever Dream.”
The last time we posted Matthew Squires in 2015, he was writing melancholic acoustic ballads. “American Fever Dream” is really anything but. With sloppy electric guitars and Squires’ wobbly vocals, the track is reminiscent of slack-rock gods like Built to Spill or Pavement.
Squires said of writing the song: “it felt disingenuous to not address the cultural/societal crises we’re all engulfed in, but I also didn’t want to compose something polemical or ideologically rigid. I felt like all the political turmoil is symptomatic of a much deeper, almost spiritual issue which everyone feels but can’t quite name.” Continuing, he said the song is “trying to dig to the roots of my own American consciousness, hold the whole tangled system up and affirm it.” Squires accomplishes his goals, he manages to make a song that expresses dismay at the current political climate without being heavy handed or sounding preachy.
