With the title of Dirty Projectors multi-instrumentalist and backing vocalist Maia Friedman’s new solo album bidding adieu to the gray months of winter, it only feels appropriate to celebrate Goodbye Long Winter Shadow’s release last week via Last Gang with an outdoor springtime performance of the record’s single “In a Dream It Could Happen.” Set up on her front stoop in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, the songwriter battles the sounds of air traffic before diving into an acoustic take on the track for our “Neighborhoods” series.
“From the front yard, you can hear the LIRR [Long Island Rail Road] going by, planes flying overhead to LaGuardia Airport, the schoolyard across the street, motorcycles and cars, neighbors talking, fighting, laughing, playing music,” she shares of the many sonic distractions she had to overcome to capture the two-minute recording. “There really isn’t ever a quiet moment on the block, so I have no choice but to embrace the noise. This is what my neighborhood sounds like!”
Regarding the track itself, she adds: “I wanted the lyrical and musical imagery in ‘In a Dream It Could Happen’ to sweep you away into an otherworldly voyage, where vines grow at unusual speed by candlelight. From Riverside (Earth) to Iapetus Crater (Moon) in a car pulled along on a conveyor belt up through the atmosphere into the rings of Saturn. The sun rises, falls, rises, and falls again without much notice, and in the end it’s all a dream.”
Check out her performance below, and stream Goodbye Long Winter Shadow here.
