You know that feeling of spending a few glorious weeks at summer camp, enjoying time out on the water with your bunkmates and roasting marshmallows by the fire and falling in love, only to have to go home with your memories at the end of the season and let them linger in your mind as you try to stay awake in school? That's what Long Beard's new single "Means To Me" sounds like. Feelings of nostalgia come through in Leslie Bear's ethereal voice; a move back home to New Jersey inspired the wistfulness in her lyrics. The title track on Long Beard's upcoming album Means To Me -- like its previous single "Sweetheart" -- explores the meaning of home, not only for Bear to ponder, but for the listener to consider as well. Long Beard will perform at Baby's All Right on September 26th to support the release of Means To Me; take a listen to the title track below. - Will Sisskind

Sleepwalker, Long Beard’s debut album, is aptly named, for listening to each song feels like maneuvering through the hazy edges of your most melancholic dreams – both here and there, warm, and cool, so close and yet so distant.  Perpetually teetering between sleep and awake, the album opens up with an instrumental track that sounds like it's being played backwards, slowly leading into “Porches,” a song of desire and longing where Leslie Bear pleads “who do you love?/ Who do you love?/ And is it enough?” The album climaxes at "Dream" - before the vocals start disintegrating, becoming almost indiscernible, with the looping electronic textures folding into themselves – as if the silhouette of those gentle songs disappeared into a shadow and then became nothing more than a film blanketing the early hours of dusk.

“Please don’t forget/ You’re something I listen to/ When I’m not sleeping.”

Don’t miss Long Beard performing at Baby’s All Right with Emily Yacina, Yohuna, and Crosslegged on 2.29. - Adriana S Ballester

A gentle, dreamy uneasiness runs through the bedroom recordings of Long Beard’s late 2015 release “Sleepwalker.” The 13 track Team Love Records release is the culmination of singer-songwriter Leslie Bear’s introspective creativity. Combining backward-loop studio techniques with traditional folk compositions, the band achieves a subtle, needy urgency. The heart tugging ache of The Sundays’ Harriet Wheeler can be found on lead track “Porch,” as chords and voice layer in a dissonant beauty. “Hates The Party” (streaming below) creates further reflective moments, while putting forward the statement that “there's more than one reason, to hate the world spinning - everyone hates the party.” “Summer/Fall” shows the benefits of taking ideas into larger studios, making excellent use of backward looping as the instrumental base for Leslie’s temperate vocals. “Dream” impresses with counterpoint, out-of-sync percussive background click, cleverly approximating the chaotic sleeping mind. “Someplace” takes that even further with a three and a half minute soundscape containing the single lyric “always thinking of some place some time ago.” Long Beard plays live tomorrow (December 29th) at Baby’s All Right. - Dave Cromwell