2 items
This is the first I’ve heard of Chris Brain, and it’s a quiet, easy record to sit with. Mostly acoustic guitar, picked rather than strummed, with other players filling in around it. There’s pedal steel, clarinet, violin and piano, but never much at once. The songs don’t change a lot as they go. Quite lovely.
Sean Solomon spent the better part of a decade fronting Moaning on Sub Pop before that band wound down, and went back to making animated videos for Run the Jewels and Unknown Mortal Orchestra in the quieter stretch that followed. The World Is Not Good Enough is his first solo record, on ANTI-, and it sounds like a record made by someone who took the long way round to it.
Hushed, melodic, personal; “Postcard” is the standout and “Black Hole” is the most honest: “I’m afraid if I have children / I might pass this sadness on”. Coping mechanisms, fears named rather than dodged.