With “Last Quarter (Studio Live),” Avenues proves that good music, like good stories, never dies
Taken from their forthcoming album Live in Studio, “Last Quarter” was initially recorded as a demo in 2017 but later left by the band during their Forgotten Notebooks period. After years of distance and subtle refinements, the track takes its first official bow, and it’s worth the wait.
“Last Quarter” plays like a quiet storm nascent in one’s chest, a shedding of emotion and a lowered weight folding into a barebones arrangement and raw presence. The live studio environment magnifies the intimacy, picking up the tension and tenderness in real-time. Avenues doesn’t make the mistake of overproducing or glossing it over. They let the song breathe, having every twist and turn take its time and marinate.
“Last Quarter” is a confessional reckoning and release sort of specialty. The lyrics follow an emotional decline after successive disappointments, like a dying moon with haunting beauty. As the band puts it, the song is an acknowledgment of a realization in time, a crucial instant when one realizes a change long yearned for may never arrive, and the muttering, almost reluctantly asserting power that comes with that.
The band sets the tone for this emotional landscape with a new visual based on footage collected over the last year and creative journeys. The song is a journey forgotten for so long but now revitalized in a new form.