Re-Visiting the Brandtson of Yesteryear

Since the last post was about new Brandtson, this post is about old Brandtson. I've been looking around on the net and found some great video of the guys, the first is their video for "Mexico" from their 2004 release, Send Us A Signal.



The next video is from Cornerstone 2004, a show at which I was present and was standing up and to the right of the guy that filmed this. The two songs represented here are "Who Are You Now" and "Throwing Rocks Tonight," both also off of Send Us A Signal. And, yes, Matt is wearing an orange Tiger Cubs t-shirt.



Anyhow, how fun it is to reminisce, no? Note: you may need to install the "Shockwave" plugin to view this if you're using Firefox (or some other browser that doesn't know what to do with the videos.

Brandtson-Nobody Dances Anymore-For a Reason

So I've been a loyal brandtson fan since the late '90s and absolutely love anything they record. I'm trying to tell myself that as I listen to their new disc: Hello, Control. Brandtson's full length LPs are usually always a step in a new direction, but this...well...where do I start?

This album is chock-full of dance beats and computer synth stuff-probably mostly due to the new bass player, Adam Boose-which is different to say the least. The guitars take a back seat on this album, and the all of the drum beats sound fairly similar. Luckily we still have the continually amazing harmonies of Myk and Jared, but in a different vein this time. Some of the melodies are so catchy you find yourself humming them in shower and then as soon as you get out of the car to buy more coffee at Wal Mart (trust me, I know, it happened about an hour ago).

I've been reading other reviews on the internet and most everyone agrees--except for the "Editorial" reviews who all say this is "Brandtson's strongest album to date." I'm not quite sure that it's a dud, but it's not their strongest album to date (ever heard of a little thing called "Fallen Star Collection"?). For now I'm content to try to let it grow on me. The songs that I find myself enjoying so far are "Earthquakes and Sharks" and "Parallels," but some of them I had to skip over after hearing them two times already, alas we'll see how it goes. If anyone else has heard the album please make your thoughts known.

To end on a hopeful note, chances are that their next album will sound completely different anyway--that's what they do--and they're good at it. Also, the pic at the top is one that I took at Cornerstone a couple years ago, and it's only fuzzy because I used the crappy scanner in the library, my apologies. Anyhow, they always put on a good show there. Later.