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| Tom Sless |
RISING AMERICANA ARTIST TOM SLESS RELEASES
MUSIC VIDEO ‘ASTRONAUT’ AMID HIGH PRAISE
FOR ‘ASSURANCE, CRAFT AND CONVICTION’ ON ‘UPLIFTING’
DEBUT ALBUM, ‘CALIFORNIA DREAM’
The music video for the shimmering pop-inflected track, “Astronaut,” the first video from LA based Americana singer-songwriter-guitar slinger TOM SLESS’s critically acclaimed debut album, California Dream, premieres at American Songwriter, noting how the song “bops along with a cheery, musically positive outlook as Sless sings confessional lyrics of the struggles and nagging insecurities we all confront.”
The exclusive music video premiere follows an early summer review in the magazine which marveled how the album’s “assurance, craft and conviction belie the fact that [Tom]’s a novice or a newcomer of any kind. … Great stuff indeed.” The review also responded to the question “Astronaut” poses in its lyrics: Will anyone remember me? “Based on the evidence offered here,” said the reviewer, “the answer is an emphatic yes indeed.” Disciples of Sound cited “Astronaut” for recalling “Long Player Late Bloomer-era Ron Sexsmith [matching] quirky songwriting with full bodied arrangements that moved between pop and rock. There’s so much of that same kind of quality to be found here and that’s where the sizzle sits and stays.”
With its rowdy country-folk chorus, and propelled by searing guitars on the bridge, “Astronaut” urges us never to regret the past, but to let go of it and reach out and embrace what you’re supposed to do.
Read and watch the video HERE.
“‘Astronaut’ illustrates the main insecurity I faced after deciding to redirect my life's focus toward my music,” says Sless. “Pursuing music full-time was following the only dream I had since I was a kid, and I felt uncertainty as to whether I would be able to realize that dream. However, processing those emotions through writing this song helped me understand more about what ‘making it’ and ‘worth it’ really meant. In my case, my pursuit will be ‘worth it’ so long as I fully embrace my passion for music as the foundation of who I am, take things slowly, practice letting go, and live in the moment.”
To illusminate the lyrical juxtaposition in the chorus hook "I'm an astronaut, but I'm lost at sea," Sless appears as an astronaut lost in the middle of a never-ending sea, with nothing to look at but the outstretching abyss and the sorely missed stars above. Filming was done at Seal Beach, CA and the waterway entrance to Marina del Rey, on the rocky south jetty.
The music video debuts as acclaim continues to mount for the transplanted Jersey Shore native (by way of Baltimore) as the media discovers and embraces California Dream. NPR’s Lakeshore Public Radio show, Midwest Beat with Tom Lounges, during a featured interview session, called California Dream “one of the best debut albums I’ve heard in a long time, and certainly one of the best I’ve gotten to hear this year.” United Stations Radio Network is currently hosting a pair of Sless quarantine video performances on its YouTube channel that have combined for over 8,000 views in their first week, with an exclusive interview with Sless for The Record podcast coming soon.
