With tight percussion, colourful synths and slick vocal harmonies, Washing D.C. based musician The Landing creates a distinctly European feeling sound on new single In This Together.
The musical project of classically trained musician and amateur astronomer Jon Bell, In This Together builds on the meditative nature of track This Way, released back in May. Bell sees The Landing as a project “seeking to turn the struggle of finding one’s place in the Universe into an anthem for the optimistic”.
A Casio-calculator-watch dance aesthetic evokes Hot Chip, but the verse has the refined, clean lines of early Phoenix and Erlend Øye’s The Whitest Boy Alive. The chorus is a comparative explosion of sound – arpeggiated melodies providing a sense of forward momentum, lifting Bell’s vocal delivery.
In the closing minute of In This Together, Bell briefly strips his song back to a minimal piano accompaniment to his vocal, before re-applying each layer, and finally dropping an angular, post-punk style guitar solo. The result is infectious, urgent and over quickly. I find myself wanting more.
In This Together is the third single lifted from The Landing’s forthcoming debut LP, Beautiful Human Beautifully Human. The song is partly inspired by the Carl Sagan quote, “For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love”, leveraging Bell’s love of space and astronomy as he reaches for into the universe for meaning. Check it out below: