"With an unruly amount of Chicago pride, Briar Rabbit is a
promising talent to keep your eye on in 2011."--From the promotional material for "Briar Rabbit & The Company You Keep"
That statement alone is good enough for me to give attention to this record, but as I explained in my previous post, I have ulterior motives for reviewing "Briar Rabbit & The Company You Keep".
I've known Phillip-Michael Scales for over a year, maybe a year and a half by now. We worked together at a chain casual dining establishment where I got to know of his intense passion for both listening to and playing music. It's his thing. He invests every ounce of energy into it, which explains why he was such a horrible server. Kidding, Phil.
I've seen the guy play live before and because of that, I didn't have to hear a note of this album to know that he's the real deal. Phillip-Michael is native to Detroit, but comes to Chicago via Boston, where he graduated from the prestigious Berklee College of Music (recent graduates include Passion Pit and St. Vincent). He's well-versed in his craft and takes songwriting, playing live, and recording very seriously. In a time where everyone plays an instrument and anyone can get a copy of Pro Tools and bang out a record, such dedication and eye toward quality is a breath of fresh air.
Needless to say, I was excited to hear the debut release from Briar Rabbit, Phillip-Michael's stage/recording monicker, and doubly honored that he'd ask me to review it. So in hopes of matching that spirit of taking one's craft seriously, I'll do my best to give the album the treatment it deserves.
The first thing I'll tell you about "Briar Rabbit & The Company You Keep" is that I like it. I'm not going to mess around with the star system or a grading scale, nor am I going to take the snobbish route of writing a review so dense and layered with "look at me I'm so smart" critic speak, that you have no idea if the reviewer actually had an opinion of the record or at some point just stopped listening in favor of watching himself/herself recite poetry in his/her mirror. So my opinion: Like.
That said, is it a perfect record? No, but at the same time, musically, structurally, production quality-wise, this does not seem like a debut record. The songs are ultra-catchy and when he's hitting on all cylinders, he's as good or better than a lot of well-known names.
If there is a theme for the record, I think it's put forth with the following lyrics found in track 1, "Numbers":
"Love keeps you warm and leaves you cold
Back and forth and sometimes bought and sold
For every heart, there is a hole
But that's not how we'd like our story told"
Many of the songs touch on these sorts of thoughts, which I would consider to be the thoughts of a Realist Romantic. Romantic and believing in love, so much that maybe one gets a little too overzealous, but also with a keen awareness of the damage and heartache that wanting someone so badly can lead to. As Pat Benatar told us in the '80s, "Love is a battlefield". Briar Rabbit adds to this discussion with the following:
"You are a battleground for a civil war where no one wins
Between a lonely body and a heart whose only wish is to be alone."
So what to do? "Keep it casual or be a casualty". Those lines from "All My Words" would seem to me to be a warning. If you let yourself go all in for love, be prepared to get scorched. But still, despite this knowledge, we do it anyway. Sometimes despite the realism, you end up just being romantic.
And there's a definite mix or the two elements at work. There's the clear headed advice from Dad in "Note to Self: Make New Mistakes", but there's also the mournful wondering about how well we truly knew or know a person we loved maybe too much in, "Putch". And finally, there's the letting go in, "Float".
Phillip-Michael Scales has the type of voice that can handle what it takes to properly express the emotion of these type of lyrics. He uses his voice as an instrument, with subtlety when the song calls for subtlety and passion when it calls for passion. He's got great range and is undoubtedly well-trained.
Speaking of instruments, the musicians on this record are outstanding. I'm not sure if it's the same people throughout the whole record, but they all do a wonderful job of enhancing the songs. From the strings, to the lead guitar, to the backup singers, these are not only well-arranged pieces of indie pop, but terrificly executed as well. Phillip-Michael's voice blends well with a female voice and this is employed several times throughout.
I'm not a fan of every song on the record. I feel that "Float" and "Putch" aren't quite as much to my liking as everything else, but the thing is, this is probably more out of personal taste rather than quality. These are still well-written, well-structured songs. And in fact, I love the imagary employed in "Putch":
"Your room hangs like the moon
Against the dark apartments"
I think I'm just not in to ballads that much. But I can appreciate what he does and can't say that they aren't good songs. The record is solid through and through. With hints of Wilco, Steely Dan (mostly from the guitar on the track, "The Company You Keep"), and Bright Eyes, these are supremely catchy tunes from a man who respects the craft of the singer-songwriter, and knows how to bring them to life with the proper layers of musicians, or lack there of when appropriate. This album shows spectacular promise.
And that promise comes together on the highlight of the album, "Tread Lightly". It's the song that most showcases Phillip-Michael's songwriting capabilities as well as vocal abilities. It's at once filled with hopeful optimism, reflective self-doubt, yearning, and honesty. And musically, it is a sublime combination of all the pieces you may have noticed here and there throughout the album. The band is showcased with great fiddle work, rightfully restrained guitar, mournful organ, wonderfully bounding piano, more supurb background vocals, and Phillip-Michael's best vocal performance on the record, as he hits all the emotional notes just right. You can't help but want to clap right along.
At times, the record gets too poppy for my tastes, but that's not really a fair criticism, as obviously this is very much indie pop, as Phillip-Michael Scales rightfully self-describes the music of Briar Rabbit. Once again, it's a matter of taste. But if you look at the album for what it is beyond just taste, it's hard to find much to criticize about it. In fact the songs have been lodged in my brain quite a bit lately, which proves their effectiveness. What more can you ask for with a three minute pop song than to have it find it's way into repeat mode on a person's mental playlist? That's no small feat.
So yes, I can agree with the statement that "Briar Rabbit is a promising talent to keep your eye on in 2011." But more than 2011, I look forward to what he has to offer in the years to come. Part of me maybe biased because I know Phillip-Michael, but I think I can say with a good deal of objectivity that this is a good record and if he stays as committed to honing his craft as he is right now, the sky is truly the limit for what's to come.
If you're in the Chicago area, you'd be a fool not to catch Briar Rabbit at one of the following venues:
Whistler, 2421 N. Milwaukee Avenue (Sunday, January 30 w/ Maurice)
Double Door, 1572 N. Milwaukee Avenue (Monday, March 7 w/ The Minneapolis Henrys)
briarrabbit.net
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