The Something Will Land album cover/Image courtesy of Big Hassle
An anchor of the Vermont jamband Phish, but at times more a member of the four-piece school than a breaching dolphin, keyboard player Page McConnell is playing a new tune at the moment and has got plenty to say.
McConnell has released his latest album, Something Will Land, and is the focus of a GQ article by Grayson Haver Currin.
The album, according to a press release, is “An exquisite space of ambient afterglow…Something Will Land feels as if Page McConnell simply slipped behind his instruments and waited to get lost, arriving at a place for settling in amid all the world’s ever-increasing entropy.”
McConnell launched into work on Something Will Land in the wake of his last album, Maybe We’re The Visitors. He changed his approach to recording his own albums, reconfiguring his Burlington studio so he was positioned to perform, record, and engineer his piano pieces solo, alone in the room. McConnell then combined the piano with a “panoply” of synthesizers.
Page McConnell/Photo courtesy of Big Hassle
The songs on Something Will Land evoke a range of images, from those photos of Buzz Aldrin on the moon with all kinds of lunar and celestial things reflected in his helmet’s visor; to the 1982 dystopian film, “Blade Runner,” which straddles the line between film noir and survival in a bleak yet enticing future that seemingly beckons us to take a leap.
“Each of the eight gorgeous instrumentals McConnell created for Something Will Land feels like a sculptural sanctuary, a hideaway from the hustle of life and the bustle of a band that is constantly busy reinventing itself,” the press materials read. “McConnell embedded beautiful little melodies amid these long-distance hums, anchors that give these drifts local gravity…Perhaps the most cohesive solo work of McConnell’s career, Something Will Land is a deep exhalation as the sun slips past the horizon at last, a welcome comedown to where the world slows just enough to notice how beautiful your surroundings have become.”
In the GQ article, McConnell talks about home life with his daughters and wife; performing with Phish; and his relationship with the band’s front man, Trey Anastasio, who considers McConnell to be his best friend. The keyboard player also reveals plenty about his next album, including some lyrics.
“In dreams I live/In dreams I die,” the article’s author recalls hearing through a bluetooth speaker paired with McConnell’s phone. “My favorite dreams are when I fly.”
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