For all the singer-songwriters who think they’re hot shit and want everyone to know it, there are just as many who’d prefer to lay low and essentially keep their craft to themselves. Among those who fall in the latter category? Guitarist-vocalist Jason Silverberg.
See, Silverberg launched his solo-endeavor-turned-full-band project The Lennings in the mid-aughts right here in Austin. Heyday highlights include The Lennings’ 2007 debut Big Beige Car, whose ten tracks have collectively racked up hundreds of thousands of streams, and their 2011 standalone cover “You’re the One That I Want”, which earned placement in NBC’s Parenthood soundtrack and nears nine million spins on Spotify alone. And yet we haven’t hardly heard a peep from The Lennings since the winter of 2012, when they dropped their sophomore full-length Inside.
Well it turns out that Silverberg shelved that indie-folk foray at the turn of the 2010s but scrapped the sabbatical when he returned to writing and recording at the start of the pandemic. A decade removed from previously-persistent studio output, this new iteration of The Lennings dodges doggedness in favor of a slow, steady, and cinematic approach. Yep, beginning with “New Year” (appropriately issued on January 1st, 2022), The Lennings is now a sporadic multimedia endeavor, where each sparse single release is served up alongside a visual counterpart. And today The Lennings officially set the pace with the second installment of this contemporary era, “Secondhand“. Lyrically, it chronicles a wallflower grappling with prolonged eye contact, casual conversation, and the very circuitry of time itself. Visually, it’s a largely over-the-shoulder perspective that tails a hooded introvert’s cross-Austin expedition. Sonically, it walks a tightrope of ’90s alt-folk with a beautiful blend of acoustic and electric guitars, balanced out with Silverberg’s soothing, multi-tracked vocal harmonies.
Altogether? “Secondhand” stops time for almost three minutes with a masterfully melancholy depiction of social awkwardness.