Last summer, Peter Matthew Bauer joined the first wave of Walkmen solo releases with his strong debut Liberation! He spent much of the following 12 months on the road, starting with a band but eventually heading out on his own, in his car, with one electric guitar and one acoustic, to play a series of intimate shows in people’s living rooms and apartments along the East and West coasts. Bauer used those shows to try out some new material for his forthcoming sophomore effort, which he’s already been working on in Austin. His new single, “Hold On To Someone (Quiet Version)” is one of those tracks. Along with its B-side — “You Are The Chapel (Guitar Version),” a stripped-down performance of one of Liberation!‘s standouts — it was recorded live to tape at an analog recording studio called the Soul Shop in Medford, MA, one of the uncustomary venues on Bauer’s living room tour. (The night before he’d played a wood shop in Maine, and the night after he played a keg party in Syracuse, but these were all the quirky outliers of the tour.) Like the single he released last October, “You Always Look For Someone Lost,” “Hold On To Someone (Quiet Version)” is a hint at what’s to come; Bauer’s planning a full-band rendition of it for his next record. Right now, though, the song exists as a sparse, ruminative solo endeavor — a document of Bauer’s unique tour, and a transition from Liberation! to whatever comes next.

The “Hold On To Someone” single is available for purchase at 1PM this afternoon. Pre-order it at Bandcamp and look for it on iTunes later this week.