LISTEN: American Sigh Shares Folky New Single “Proof”

New album, Virtue Signal, out May 17th

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2020, American Sigh, Bear Proof, Black Lives Matter, California, COVID, Los Angeles, Phil Ochs, Silver Lake, Theo Matz, Virtue Signal, West Palm Beach

Originally from West Palm Beach, Florida, emo-folk songwriter Theo Matz, who writes and records as American Sigh, recently swapped oceans by moving to the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles to be closer to family.

The change in environs no doubt inspired Matz to create. He looked towards material he was conspiring while still back east, which leaned heavily into his upbringing as a lifelong fan of folk music. It proved to be a stark contrast to how the first American Sigh album was crafted, where he worked in collaboration with his bandmates. These new songs that would soon comprise his project’s second effort, Virtue Signal, took root in isolation.

“All the songs on the first record were arranged and recorded in a room together as a four-piece band,” he explains. “I think that setup naturally makes for a more rock sound because there’s four people that want to take up space. Virtue Signal was mostly written at my apartment in Florida during the pandemic.”

American Sigh Virtue Signal album release party flier (Image: Dice)

He soon submerged himself into learning the nuances of banjo and acoustic guitar fingerpicking, implementing his studies into the songs he wrote in Florida. Settling in on the West Coast, he recorded the rough demos of the new record at home before decamping to Derek Ted’s studio, Planet Heaven 2, in the San Fernando Valley to track.

“I’ve always written more stripped back acoustic songs but struggled to find the best way to produce and arrange them” says Matz. “After working with Derek Ted for my last EP I was comfortable bringing a lot of them into this session. I actually had to make a few of the songs a bit more upbeat to balance the album out.”

Produced by Ted, Sage Duvall, and Matz, Virtue Signal features Matz on guitar, bass, and keyboard. Duvall played all drums and percussion. Additional guitars and vocals were tracked with Alex Siegel at the iconic Panoramic House in Stinson Beach. Juliet Sunflower sang background vocals on “Time Won’t Lead Home.”

“This is the most political record I’ve made” Matz explains of the new album’s themes. “I got really demoralized in 2020 watching Bernie lose the nomination, the U.S. government’s awful response to COVID-19, the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent violent repression of the Black Liberation movement… I think a lot of people felt that way. But that led me to learn a lot. I was radicalized, and I was looking for answers. A lot of the songs on the album were written that year.”

Yet it was while entrenched in the fraught nature of the COVID era that Matz found a modicum of optimism, feeling the power of people experiencing the same situation.

“Even though the situation feels hopeless, we the people have the power to move past it,” he explains. “There is a better future if we build it and overturn our current system to make a new one that serves everyone. We aren’t free until we are ALL free. When we see the police kill an unarmed black man or displace an unhoused person, or the military bomb a hospital, or a worker being exploited, or an ocean covered in an oil spill, it’s up to us to build the movement to change it. Not to say there is a panacea, but that we all have agency in history. You are not alone in your disillusionment. Our path to true freedom is linked.”

American Sigh “Proof,” self-released 2024

Rock & Roll Globe is proud to premiere one of the key tracks off Virtue Signal, the downright Ochs-evoking “Proof,” today on the site.

“‘Proof’ is a song about dishonesty in many forms: politicians, news anchors, crypto bros, bad friends, lies by omission, outright falsehoods,” he reveals about the single’s impetus. “I’ve always been a person who found it hard to lie so it can be especially upsetting when I find out I was lied to. This song encapsulates a lot of that. Especially the lies I was told about American exceptionalism, that the U.S. is a bastion of ‘peace and democracy,’ it’s a nefarious lie meant to erase a horrid history of genocide, enslavement, colonization, war and destruction.”

Listen to “Proof” below ahead of the release of Virtue Signal, which comes out on May 17th.