Imaad Wasif Debuts New Single 'So Long Mr. Fear'

Acclaimed Los Angeles singer, guitarist, and songwriter IMAAD WASIF today releases a transcendental video to his new unchained title track off his sixth studio album So Long Mr. Fear (released August 9, 2022 via Sonic Ritual).

The track begins with a staccato piano that stems from a childlike place, while it also has a pulling questionable, and pensive feeling. As told to Atwood Magazine ""So Long Mr. Fear" is as much about love for the child within me, to the child in anyone that yearns to be free. I'm just so sick of being crippled by fear in so many parts of my life and wanted to write a song to shatter it."

Filming the new video for "So Long Mr. Fear" wasn't an easy job for director Jeff Hassay, but it also inspired the film takes throughout. "My infant son was literally strapped to me throughout the entire shoot adding a tinge of chaos that was fun to navigate," Hassay says. "In a way, he was the co-director. I'm sure he thought that Imaad was singing the song to him. Was he going to scream or sleep?" As Imaad adds, "The camera was on a tripod and through every take I danced to the song to pacify the little visionary."

To capture these reflective feelings Hassay explains, "I tried to make the video look a little like Neil Young's On The Beach. It was shot near where I grew up, with the grainy fevered fog, oblivious passers by and the creepy darkness that settles into places where we were young, shrouding everything in mystery and wonder."

So Long Mr. Fear as a whole features Wasif's clear and crisp vocals amid lush instrumental arrangements that belies the album's actual remote recording arrangement. "We built a tunnel through the goddamned pandemic," Wasif says about tracking most of the album in isolation but in conjunction with producer and long-time collaborator Bobb Bruno of Best Coast.

Like songwriting experts such as Lee Hazelwood, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave, on So Long Mr. Fear, Wasif, collaborator Bruno, and mixer GRAMMY®-nominated Lewis Pesacov (Best Coast, Nikki Lane, FIDLAR, Local Natives) unearth big ideas by carving away at smaller things until they glisten with universality.

Tender yet enigmatic vulnerability is reflected effortlessly in the album's ten tracks. Largely acoustic and warmly produced to allow his vocals the space to breathe, So Long Mr. Fear utilizes atmosphere and texture to occupy the same wavelength as rhythm and melody to soaring heights. For the first time in his guitar-focused recording life, Wasif wrote a lot of So Long Mr. Fear on piano.

Yes, his expert use of open-tuned guitars, which add a luxurious, mysterious drone, endures; but the circumstances - forced isolation wrought by the pandemic - afforded him the time to mine new instrumental veins. Recording most of his master takes while both singing and playing, the aim was to excavate songs without overthinking - relying on what Wasif calls "the simplicity of their compositions - the direct passage into the emotional realms that I feel most at home in."

Listen to the new single here:

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