Record Review: Butterbrain - The EP
Reviewer’s note: This review was written in 2023.
I pretty much stopped listening to new music around the year 2000. Hate to sound like a cranky old man or an elitist snob, but around then my favorite bands started to let me down, and the new music coming out (nu metal; formulaic, lazy hiphop; the prevalence of autotune) didn’t hold my interest. The Interrupters put out a very good album six or seven years ago, and at some point I did a deep dive into Rancid’s back catalog, Overkill and The Dance Hall Crashers, but that was pretty much it. I was happy with what I had. And then I heard Butterbrain’s 2019 EP.
YouTube Music lists 5 songs on the EP. My physical copy has 6 and my version on MediaMonkey has 7, so I’ll go with that. Here is a track by track review.
1. This House Is On Fire - there seems to be a lot of songs about houses being on fire, especially the roof. The first noticeable things after the spoken word into and the refrain on this track are the extremely tight horns and guitarist Juan Rodriguez’s wah wah pedal. The interplay between the two is unusual but works very well. This leads into a repeat of Juan’s guitar work with drummer Mike Caldarella’s steady and always interesting drumwork in the background - it’s a nice touch.
2. Goodbye Letter - the track starts off with a horn intro very reminiscent of the later Beatles catalog, that orchestral, British pomp and circumstance. And, as with the Beatles, Butterbrain has had multiple singers (Aaron, Sally, Brendan and Chris) who can easily take on the mantle of lead vocals. The thing that sets it apart for me is a little spacey two second keyboard riff mixed in there. Another amazing solo by Rodriguez, which will be a recurring them in this review. Criticism - the song is too short. I would have loved to have seen where they could have gone with another two minutes.
3. Bobby’s Dead – I did not like this song at first. It didn’t fit. This is a narrative lyric of the death of the titular character, and the lyrics could have developed more of a pathos for Bobby, shown more of an internally tortured character rather than just a straight linear story of general failure. The more I listened to the soaring, at times distorted vocals of Brendan Stiles, the more I grew to love this song, although I have an early raw demo of this song and prefer listening to that. Only performed live once to my knowledge, at least with me present, at the MJN Center in Poughkeepsie, and it rocked.
4. Chasing Ghosts - a paean to the late Ethan Collins, brother of bassist, vocalist and keyboardist Aaron Collins, and this is a highlight of the album. Lyrically - it doesn’t quite mesh. The themes of addiction and loss could have integrated nicely, but don’t quite make it there. But the dichotomy missing in the lyrics is more than made up for in the duality of the music itself. After the spoken word intro delivered in Aaron’s distinctive outer borough accent, the song jumps right into a beautiful acoustic/classical guitar intro, which is followed by an very discordant bridge, and this repeats several times. Aaron’s lament at the loss of his brother is palpable.
5. 93 Million Miles From The Sun - in the annals of recorded music, there are perhaps five or six pieces that I (in my very humble opinion) would consider perfect songs. That’s it. You have to nail the music, nail the lyrics - no weak spots. From Aaron’s single note bass intro to singer Sally May’s vocals to the guitar work at the end that is up there with any solo David Gilmour ever recorded - this is a track that belongs in the Smithsonian. Am I overstating things? You be the judge, but I don’t think so. The lyrical theme of environmental degradation with the repetition of the phrase “I know” - “well, I know”, “And I know” - is fantastic. The phrase appears first at the beginning of several lines, and then later and the end of others. The melodic chorus is amazing, and interesting - in the first half, it is Aaron’s voice that dominates, and in the second half of the chorus, it’s Sally’s voice that jumps out at you. Her inflection in the spoken word passage in the middle in dead on, but made more interesting by sung phrases such as the perfectly-placed “shining on”. And Juan’s work on the solo at the end bears repeating - it’s a simple solo technically, but so emotive that one has to listen to it again and again.
6. Fear - minor key piano and background laughter kick off this masterpiece, and the piano is what really makes this track stand out, along with the stellar bass line, the slightly distorted vocals and the chicken-scratch guitar. The classical guitar returns in the middle, and it is a welcome addition. The muted horns in the chorus are a nice touch too - they stay in the background just enough to let the gang vocals pop.
7. And the Missing Track - Guinea Pig Slut Bitch. Why missing? I decided to clip my favorite fifteen or twenty seconds out of the song in order to make it my phone’s ringtone, and I accidentally edited the original track. I got a 128 kb version off of YouTube, but the decline in audio quality is noticeable. This song is a fun romp - it could have squeezed right into the ska revival of the early to mid 90’s, and gives hint as to some of the direction of songs like Circus Life on the next album, but perhaps more on that later. I don’t like to refer to songs as “duets” - it makes me think of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton trading silly simplistic lines, but this song is an interesting piece about the complexities of human relationships. And it mentions sushi!
Verdict - 9.5 on a scale of 10. This record loses half a star for being an EP rather than a full album. Can their next album, Sapiosexual, live up to the standard set by this tour de force? Tune in to find out.