Since March of 2020, we’ve been in an age of long-distance; pretty much every interpersonal connection, except for those with our families and roommates, became a long-distance relationship. You don’t need me to tell you that this has been hard, or that it has posed particular challenges for musicians.
But I can tell you about a band that has answered this challenge in a particularly interesting way.
The A.M.s are Adrian Libertini and Mariko Langan, a long-distance indie duo based in Seattle, Washington (Mariko) and San Louis Obispo, California (Adrian). In 2019, Adrian was tuning Mariko’s piano, and proposed a musical collaboration. Soon thereafter, he moved to California, and then the coronavirus arrived and estranged us all, but the new duo took off anyway.
Mariko writes the lyrics, Adrian comes up with vocal melody and guitar accompaniment, Mariko adds piano and harmonies, then if they’re vibing, Adrian adds bass, drums, and other instruments. “Ignite the Sky” is the title track of their upcoming first album, and features Jason Edwards on the drums.
Adrian’s vocals have a rough, yearning edge, like someone straining to sing to the moon. Mariko’s harmonies float above, softer and more shimmery. The voices parallel each other throughout the song, but the different vocal textures place them in separate spheres. I picture Adrian as a stargazer in a field, singing with his head thrown back, and Mariko as an astronaut, closer to the stars than most of us get, but still far away. The drums remind me of night wind rising in a field at the edge of the woods – that sense of acceleration, the night drawing in its breath.
The images in the lyrics are whimsical; most of us won’t ever “climb up starlight’s ladder, grab a moonbeam’s hand.” But these fanciful images give form to the loneliness and longing that can strike in all kinds of circumstances. The band mentions the separations of quarantine as one thing they had in mind; also, Mariko’s parents’ experience of giving up their child for adoption. The song’s images of yearning also echo the band’s process of making music at a distance: loving someone absent, yearning for togetherness, feeling illuminated from afar. I’m not talking about romantic love here, but the strange, nameless love shared through music.
I was talking with my former bandmate about this the other day – the love that music holds, and the loneliness that drives us to reach out to each other through sound. I’m writing to you now from the corner of a weird little teahouse that used to stay open late, sometimes, as a music venue. If I time-traveled back to a blue-neon night in February 2020, I’d land amid the instrument cables of three near-strangers who would later become my bandmates and dear friends.
These days, our drummer lives in another city, our bassist is trying to get hired to build electric cars, and our lead guitarist is (I assume) continuing his career as the most wholesome frat bro this side of the Blue Ridge. And I am trying to figure out what to do with this hole in my heart. “Celestial friends move on; I’m wishing they were near” sing the A.M.s. I’m wishing, too.
