Brian Borcherdt...

Actually the name he's recording under is the remains of Brian Borcherdt but that's a minor detail given the overall elegance of his third solo recording. Perhaps the more esoteric of you out there are familiar with Brian's other band Holy Fuck which is in a lot of ways an experimental noise band except for the fact that the noise they make isn't really noisy but is instead rather dancey. Holy Fuck's stated goal is to create electronic dance music without using any of the favored props (i.e., laptops, sequencers, midi, etc.) instead they're using toy keyboards and film editing machines. Using the organic to mimic the digital, I like it. But that isn't at all what Borcherdt's solo material is like. No, not at all. In his solo work Borcherdt is much more of a traditional singer songwriter using traditional instruments. On recommedation I recently picked up his April 2005 release The Remains of Brian Borcherdt, Vol. 2 (yes, there's a Vol. 1 and no I haven't heard it yet but I will) and have been very impressed. His songwriting his heart rending, personal, honest, celebratory and sad at the same time. Borcherdt's voice is a little twisted (in a good way) which compliments the cacophonous aspect of his songs well, but that same twisted quality also imbues the quiter songs with what I can only think to call honesty. I know that sounds cheesy, but there's just something believable and sympathetic about Borchert's songs. Imagine if John Mayer melded with Tom Waits and ended up with a personality, all of a sudden those bodies wouldn't all be coarse wonderlands but fragile pieces of beauty to be handled with delicate hands and real emotion.

2 songs from The Remains of Brian Borcherdt, Vol. 2:

Moments of Protest

Flight

In other news over at Misra Records they're streaming the new Centro-matic album Fort Recovery which may be, frankly, their best record yet and I 'm a huge Centro fan. I'll be posting something from the new record tomorrow, but for now listen to the stream and be blown away. It's really that good. Really.