Sunday, October 25, 2009

My very first post here at Side One Track One featured a song by Brazos, a local band who remains one of my constant favorites despite having taken the better half of as far back as I can remember to record their new album.  But the wait is finally over.  I, or rather Autobus Records, give you Phosphorescent Blues.

The short review is:  Buy this album.  You’ll like it.  And it will make you feel good inside.

But if you need a little convincing, I’ve got a review and some music for you below.

Brazos – Phosphorescent Blues

The truth about Brazos for me is comprised of the following contradiction: a) Their 2007 EP A City Just As Tall is probably some of my favorite 16 minutes of music, but b) I became increasingly (topping at vehemently) bored with Brazos while waiting something like two and a half years for a proper follow-up.  Two and a half years?  This better be some slick shit, guys.

Well, luckily I can now add to the equation c) Phosphorescent Blues, the new full-length album from the group that's redeemingly good.  What made A City Just As Tall so successful in my book was its inventive use of textures.  Recall how the sexy Ms. Virginia carved a slow and steady beat into a backdrop of lank noises shifting in the distance, yet songs like Mary Jo shone with a full, warm spectrum of sound that seemed sublimely natural, like the intangible "yellow" of sunlight.  Lofty (read: pretentious) images, perhaps, but I really liked this EP.

:Brazos - Mary Jo:

The problem with A City Just As Tall, or maybe with any EP you listen to for 2 years, is that soon it becomes extremely predictable when the band switches between those two approaches to texture.  And not just in the sense that I now have the songs memorized, but the organic quality of the music seems to fade with age.  Phosphorescent Blues is essentially a big chunk of organic matter to pick up the slack.  And the textures are all over the map, but still with a penchant for letting tangential ideas naturally align into solid bright melodies.

To describe the feeling you get listening to the album is a little bit like writing a tour book, which is to say it hardly captures the amorphous core of the experience, but here’s the basic Lonely Planet Brazos.  First thing you notice, if you start from track one, My Buddy, is the use of soft crowd noise with a bass line current running right through the middle.  Cue a few more bright instruments and Martin Crane’s sly voice, and let the band turn up the reverb like you’d slouch back in a recliner on a cool fall day (which is exactly how I’m listening to this album), and now we’re talking Brazos.

Various iterations of this theme crop up all throughout Phosphorescent Blues.  Notable accents include a primarily piano number, Pues (think Moonlight Sonata + a little Ragtime), and Avignon, where Crane shyly sings "I wish that they were here to see us now, on the front porch of Avignon," and the music suddenly dissolves into heavy piano chords.  Each song holds something a little bit new, always slightly uplifting, at least in the sense that any worries you may have previous had are suddenly much smaller.  (For that last bit, I’d suggest putting Tell, which is just below, on repeat. You’ll save a ton of psychiatry fees.)

It’s hard to describe an album as good as this one without stepping in a few clichés.  My friend, who listened to part of the album with me, mused "If I hear another album review describe something as "low-fi" I’m going to shoot myself."  Phosphorescent Blues is in effect what most of those cliché-ridden albums aspire to, all packaged-up into something organic and spontaneous.  I’ve done my best to find a collection of adjectives that serve the album better than those clichés: therapeutic, luminous, honest, billowing, perennial with the Earth.  Or would you have preferred "low-fi"?

My friends used to live in this old white house down in South Austin. It had hardwood floors, white walls, no central air, no shower head, but about a thousand books and as many ounces of whiskey lying around; always hospitable, always like home, like the passage of time seemed to forget to take the place along with it. This album is like that, in fact it was written in a house in the same part of town. You should listen to this album. Seriously, you’ll feel better about everything.

:Brazos - Tell:

- John Michael Cassetta -



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