From our BEST Music of the decade/BEST albums of the decade features:
Matthew Campbell and Robert Hirschfeld’s work as Common Loon functioned as two bookends to a decade in local music releases: their debut record, The Long Dream of Birds, came out in 2010, and their self-titled release coming out nearly ten years later in April of this year basically out of the blue. While we waited, we had this album, and all the while, we’d continue to wonder when the next album was going to actually come out, if ever. There was kind of a cool mystery about the whole thing.
Time spent listening to The Long Dream of Birds over and over again really never got boring. There’s a specific charm to it that made the wait for the next one tolerable. Most of us probably came to the conclusion that this was going to be the only album we were going to get from Common Loon. The Long Dream of Birds still stands up after that span of time, and the collection of 11 pure indie rock and dream pop tracks is on display as one of the best albums to ever come out of this music scene. These guys made an album that is purely a mixture of both of what they do so well respectively while not ever remotely feeling like a tug-of-war. Listening to Long Dream makes it seem like they are the frontmen of a two person band. It’s really a beautiful record, top to bottom, and this piece of work is a showcase of a band of brothers just writing great songs, one after the next. (Patrick Singer)
Album art by Common Loon
