If you are curious enough and try and search the facts about who’s Glenn Echo, where he was born, went to school, you’ll surely find someone. Probably not Glenn Echo who recorded Fixed Memory as his debut album.
On the other hand, if you look up one Matt Gaydar, you might be on the right track. That is actually the ‘Glenn Echo’ you are looking for.
Yet, the question is — should you be looking out for him? Well, if you take a listen to this relatively mellow, subdued album, you just might as well.
Is it something you have never heard before? Not really, but that is not the pertinent question here.
Sure, we’ve all heard this kind of gentle alt-folk, particularly in recent times with artists like Big Thief, or José González. But the thing is, with tracks like “Snowing.” or “Moon Seems Lost” Gaydar/Echo certainly reaches the quality level of the above-mentioned artists and that is quite an achievement in itself.
But Echo is no mimicker, he doesn’t try to resemble anyone, he seems to just be trying to be himself, inject something personal into his music and succeeds at that without a problem.
“Music is a language when it comes to emotions,” explains Gaydar. “Memory—and that idea of fixed memory, in particular, something that’s deeply tied to a location or emotion—can be incredibly moving. We can feel like we’ve endured similar moments in life, even if we’ve lived in very different ways from one another, just because the music evokes a similar emotion in all of us. I think the album works best as a potentially shared experience in that way.”
And he gives that explanation through his music too.
