Tom Brosseau - Empty Houses Are Lonely
[FatCat]

The realm of the singer-songwriter who chooses to go it alone, accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, has to be one of the most difficult for any musician to inhabit. You are, as it were, the lone figure standing in the limelight. It takes a brave soul to be willing to bare themselves to the world without excess musical adornment, not to mention a great deal of talent, both instrumentally and in terms of penning material with enough depth to stand up to the scrutiny this type of presentation invites. Tom Brosseau is one such of these souls. This album, which is made up of recordings between 2001-2003, is largely acoustic and offers an intriguing glimpse of an enigmatic and original troubadour at work.

Of course, it's impossible to be completely original, particularly in this day and age, where virtually every genre of music relies on recycling the past (or in some cases simply plagiarising the past). The realm of the singer-songwriter is no different. And so in the work of Tom Brosseau there are inescapable comparisons that can be drawn to Tim and Jeff Buckley. At times you can particularly hear Tim in the jazzy, freefalling melancholy of the arrangements and Jeff in the vocal mannerisms. This is not to say that Brosseau ever descends into mere derivativeness, this collection transcends simply being the product a cosmopolitan record collection. This is a man who clearly possesses an imaginative musical vocabulary.

The arrangements hint at this, turning his back on traditional verse-chorus-verse song structures, Brosseau has opted for something entirely more free flowing and cerebral, which lends at times, such as on 'Heart Of Mine', a certain antiquated mystery, while elements of mysterious pre-war jazz add a sepia tint to the lyrical strangeness of 'How To Grow A Woman'.

Despite the intimate nature of this record, at the same time there is something somewhat unreachable about it, as if Brosseau is the product of some barely remembered time, mainly obscured to us now by the seismic cultural shift of the late 20th century. For those looking to venture back to a simpler time for a while, these ten strangely beautiful reveries are the method of transport you're looking for.