There’s always a serenity to Max García Conover’s music but his latest single, “5 to 4,” has a particular kind of delicate magic. Like his previous work, the song does not shy away from emotion and truth but rather unfurls it in little digestible details. Growing with the perfect mix of patience and urgency, the melody only shifts subtly in range as the guitar circles in gentle strums and the vocal harmonies of Paula Prieto add a cloud-like backdrop. Max García Conover said of the grounding song:
i wrote this song while going through letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother in the 1940s. just after arriving in the usa, my grandmother was quarantined in a hospital for the consumptive poor for two years. my grandfather, who was 16 and had met her only a few days before she went away, sent her a mountain of love letters while she was in the hospital. after 70 years of sitting in a box, i found the letters last year and they’ve taken over my songwriting imagination.
“5 to 4” is the lead track off of Max García Conover’s new EP, everything in winter, out now on Son Canciones. You can listen to the rest of it here.
