If you're not familiar with independent singer-songwriter Hayden Brooke playing throughout the midwest since 2012, booking over 40 shows this summer and launching a tour in October, you're either living under a rock or have had the most unfortunate of local music blind spots. It's been about 2 years since the release of his first EP, Limbo, which debuted in 2017, and Brooke is back with a 5-track EP, What a Shame, which released just last Friday. Expanding a bit from his Indie Americana/Folk roots in Limbo, the wide accomplishment of soundscapes makes this album something wonderfully hard to pin down.
Listeners can feel utterly privileged to hear the open honesty of a real poet in Brooke's lyrics. I struggle to find a local writer quite as raw as Brooke, and even more rarely do I find this quality combined with the voice of a songbird. Brooke's vocals range very widely from crystal-clear falsetto to smoky, emotional brass that can be likened to Damien Rice or, at times, Ray Lamontagne. Listening to the album straight through, you'll be taken across a varied sea of warm, relaxing moods. Twangy guitars and sensory production effects take us from the gentle, lullaby feel of “Daytrippin'” to a dreamy, mysterious heartbreak in California Reds, accented by the haunting vocals of keyboardist Lexi Kays. Kays has been performing with Brooke since the beginning of 2018; she is a vocal siren ensorcelling her audience, and her ear for surprising and unique harmonies has arguably become a completely irreplaceable part of Brooke's sound.
“I was just waiting for the right female vocalist that could match the timbre of my voice. After finding her, the songs took more of a somber approach, which is something I always wanted to do but just didn't have the right musicians in my arsenal to pull it off. She was a blessing to this band and continues to be to this day.”
I asked Hayden to give us a look inside the lyrics of one of his songs, “Nostalgic Ramparts.” “It's a song about nostalgia, youth, and the dreams that too often end up fleeting. I, for some reason, had Cape Canaveral on my mind while writing this one. I also remember sitting in the backyard of this tiny house I was living in and witnessing my first super moon. It was a very enlightening experience and I felt some form of strange divinity that night and I ended up writing that entire song in one sitting. Which rarely happens.”
The album closes with instrumental outro Ananama, a wildly sensory experience that brings together a collection of tracks into a series of movements that make an album. Ananama might, in fact, be my favorite track, coming in just under 3 minutes long. The track takes out the gentle album on an incredibly eerie close; it invokes the sort of mood only worthy of a post-apocalyptic scavenger riding through desert badlands at high noon.
A huge part of this album's effectuation can be attributed to producer John Sailor. A singer-songwriter himself working on his fourth studio album, Sailor is now focusing on his recording and producing career more than ever before. His vocals are featured on opening track “Lately,” a song I first heard live at the Whistle & Keg in Cleveland, Ohio, where my immediate thought was “Fuck, do I love a good boy-duet!” The amount of care and attention Sailor has put into his friend's project combined with over a decade of experience undoubtedly makes this album the complete masterpiece that it truly is.
“John allowed me to take a more professional look at what I was trying to accomplish. At first I wanted something stripped down and vulnerable with barely any production on the songs. But his approach gave the songs new life, they took on more of a full band aesthetic rather than just being something I created and wrote in my bedroom.”
Youngstown should look forward to listening to any future projects with Sailor's name attached to them and view his name as a stamp of the highest standards of quality and mastering that our city's music has to offer.
I'm so proud to call everyone involved with Hayden Brooke's music great friends of mine. If you're from the YO or even if you're not, you would be doing a great disservice to yourself and local music by not supporting this album and lending it your ears! More than anything, I hope Hayden Brooke is so proud of what he accomplished by blowing us all away with this true masterpiece of a studio album.
What a Shame can be purchased online at Haydenbrookemusic.com or listened to on Spotify.
Kommentare