Longing

Description

Longing is a cassette-only album by the American alternative pop/rock band The Walk, released on Talkingtown Records in 1987. The album was produced, recorded, and mixed by Paul Krueger at Morning Star Communications in Springhouse, Pennsylvania, Spring-Summer 1987. (The four songs featured on the band’s self-titled debut effort re-recorded for Longing.)

The Walk features Byron Barnshaw on vocals (as well as saxophone on track A3), Jeff Butz on guitar, Jim Schneck on bass and background vocals, and Bruce Bistline on drums.

While their 1990 release Indianland got wider distribution, this independently released cassette demonstrated that The Walk’s identity was already well-realized. For such a lo-fi recording, the performances are tight, and this release would fit comfortably in the Alternative section of your local record store, as it mixed the jangly guitars of R.E.M. with the darker moods of The Cure. For my money, «Swift Horses» and «Temple Jester» are the two standouts. I only discovered this album a few years ago thanks to the administrators of the Rare/Underground Jesus Music group, and Longing has only grown on me ever since. Unfortunately, it’s not available on any platform for listening, so it may be unfair to tease you like this. But it’s worth tracking down. [Christopher Heyn, June 29, 2021]

[Brian Quincy Newcomb, CCM, February 1988]

Cassette tracklist:

Side One
A1. “Swift Horses”
A2. “The Longing”
A3. “Mundane”
A4. “Pleasure For Seconds”
A5. “Barriers”

Side Two
B1. “Fall To Stand”
B2. “Sojourn”
B3. “Temple Jester”
B4. “The Waste Of Time”
B5. “Lack Of Diction”