I never knew what “treading water” meant for a long time. It’s one of those metaphors lyricists like to use, but it always went over my head. I did eventually look it up, I know what it means now and it’s definitely used as lyrical filler in most cases. But the metaphor describes what can be a pretty horrific experience- floating only to keep your head above water; waiting for inertia to take you. But also there is a sense in which treading water must be a contemplative state, a time to reflect in that great and endless liquid mirror.
In the famous Stevie Smith poem, ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ the narrator tells the story of a ‘poor chap’ who ‘always loved larking’. The lark meets his end when he swims too far out into the cold water, there succumbing to its icy embrace. It is implied that the watchers on, who knew the lark for his playful disposition couldn’t tell whether the lark was waving his arms playfully at them, or struggling to stay afloat, and waving his arms frantically as a desperate plea for help. From a distance, the friendly wave and the cry for help look the same.
Not only is the poem a story of treading water, of struggling to stay afloat, but it is also a story of becoming too distant from others and stripping away the possibility to be known or knowable. Resultantly you float in isolation, until you can tread no more- you acquiesce to the body of water.
When I listened to Bru’s NOLAND, it felt like the first appropriate use of the metaphor of treading water, and he doesn’t even use the term. Bru’s NOLAND is ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ told from the perspective of the ‘lark’, here replaced by Bru himself, or whoever he is telling this album’s story from the perspective of.
When I saw the teaser and eventually the whole music video for Bru’s ‘DON’T LOOK DOWN’, I was reminded of the term. Bru sits at the end of a dock overlooking a lake, the blueish sky hinting at a brittle dawn. At the point at which the song ‘sinks’, Bru launches into the lake, and therein struggles to keep above its surface- he begins to tread water.
To have no land is necessarily to always be treading water.
The title of the project with this theming in mind might seem almost too literal, but ‘land’ in the context of ‘NOLAND’ can signify many things: self-belief, ego, faith, the known everyday, our friends and our relationships. A simple thematic dichotomy I use to view this album is: Land is safety and potential; the sea is peril and unchangingness.
NOLAND is a documentation of the thoughts we have when we have no choice but to emotionally tread water, and the desperate efforts made to communicate with a viewing audience who can only make out a distant waving form. It is the sound of languishing in the open sea, dreading the nothing that comes next, and the harbouring of the small hope that soon a stray ship will come to pull us up.
https://soundcloud.com/bruuises/sets/noland
Musicianship/production
Within the first half of ‘NOLAND’ the instrumentals pull a lot from lo-fi hip-hop beats. The songs are held down by looping piano chords in some songs and finger-picked, percussively muted guitar chords in others. This minimal approach to composition is elevated by thoughtful and atmospheric production, echoing the transcendental melancholia of ‘Blonde’ era Frank Ocean. The frequently multi-tracked, practically choral vocals are awash with a reverb that echoes into eternity. With his impressive range, Bru climbs from sultry vocal-fry baritone to a misery stricken and pleading falsetto. Bru‘s influences on this first half are undoubtedly being worn on his sleeveless tank top. However these influences do not overwhelm Bru’s originality. Each influence builds upon the another. They are complementary, feeling curated rather than haphazardly cut and pasted to appeal hollowly to the alternative R&B, Sad boy crowd.
The album’s first half of the album is also stacked with the bigger singles. Tracks like ‘HML’, ‘DRAMA’ and ‘CLOSE’ are short, sweet and incredibly playlist-able. ‘HML’ features a chorus sung from the cliff tops, that will drag the tears out of you at the same time it hits you as uplifting. ‘DRAMA’ has a cool-as-fuck smoky atmosphere, with the percussive section opening with finger snaps which develop into icy 808s, as Bru’s vocal flirts with the guitar. Its as ‘jazz club’ as the album gets and it’s a must listen. The sound design on the track also introduces the darker more hair raising sonics of NOLAND which feature more prominently in the album’s second half.
NOLAND’s second half tonally shifts towards more anxious soundscapes and becomes deeply ruminating lyrically. The sound design and general pallette leans towards the experimentally electronic, particularly within the album’s tour de force one-two punch, of ‘DON’T LOOK DOWN’ and ‘LONG NIGHT OUT/ 4:14 AM’. The latter song crackles like snapped power lines finding contact in a haunted breeze.The synth passage on ‘DON’T LOOK DOWN’ pulsates and blooms hypnotically as distant drums dance hypnotically across the chilling scene. I also find the vocals here really melodically compelling, perfectly complimenting the instrumental. In the song’s second movement the synth drops into a bone chilling register, as a 90s IDM glitch hats simmer in the right channel, like a modem struggling to find connective footing in a local network. The album undoubtedly contains a darkness which is sometimes understated and at other times overt and chilling.
Bru’s vocal performances across the album are confident and refined, remaining incredibly consistent throughout. His full chested, open throated mezzo-baritone croon anchors these songs and. If you like the vocalwork of brackence, EDEN, and especially Corbin, you’ll more than likely be into Bru’s vocals. Bru’s melodies, delivery and flow work in tandem to create smooth and well-paced verses. Despite having what is for me a naturally pleasing timbre to his voice, Bru doesn’t shy away from using a wide range of vocal effects across NOLAND. Using them to telegraph the arrival of a new section or tap into a new emotional register. On the back-end of ‘DRAMA’ and on the introduction to ‘CLOSE’ (which merge beautifully into one another), the music seems to get pulled down into its own malaise and drear as Bru admits that he can “be an asshole”. Though this line becomes almost tongue-in-cheek with its slowed repetition, it also feels self-loathing, as if this recognition of his own shortcomings weigh both him and his entire world down the more he reflects upon them.
These production and musical shifts add an incredible amount of depth to the album’s lyrics and themes. Bru’s lyrics can sometimes be vague and glancing, often alluding to the emotional turmoil he faces in short snippets, flashing by like texts to friends and lovers.The production interlaced with Bru’s powerful delivery adds a multi-dimensionality to his words which wrings out a sea of emotion from these fractured, romantic vignettes.
The mix of live instrumentation and synthetic elements also makes the album nice and varied. ‘BE HERE*’ even features some mean guitar leads to add to the song’s peak as the drums break out their prearranged cycles and frisson into accenting tom hits. This added instrumentation is something I would have liked to hear a bit more of, as though Bru isn’t exactly playing it safe on this album, there are some spots where some additional live instrumentation could have elevated the song out of the expected loops. In particular the song ‘POSTER BOY’ though welcome as a bright and beautiful palette cleanser after some of NOLAND’s darker spots, the track for me is almost too straightforward and sparse- with its looping pretty guitar and single-line motif, ‘Ivory’ the track sparks less intrigue and doesn’t really bring anything musically new to the table sonically.
Lyrically/ album run through
From start to finish it is clear that Bru structured this album with stark intention. The opener, ‘BE HERE*’ gives a purview of Bru’s situation and general outlook which sets up the themes and tension of the album, but through an emotionally guarded and agitated perspective.
Throughout NOLAND’s first half Bru makes grand statements of desperation and desire for self destruction. The album’s first line is literally “Kill me”, which Bru follows up with “Got me thinking about dying” on ‘HML’. But these declarations I read as somewhat tongue in cheek. The line “I’m so pissed off, I’m so angsty” he sings completely straight. It is as iif Bru is attempting to undermine- for the listening audience- the genuineness of his existential anguish and obscure its true character. This recalls the ambiguity or uncertainty represented in ‘Not Waving but Drowning’. Bru simultaneously signals an existential desperation in the recognition of his situation, whilst mocking that desperation: is he waving or drowning?
Often Bru will refer to waiting for a response from this person, they are ‘wasting my time’ (BE HERE*). He calls but she won’t pick up (‘CLOSE’). Bru is out in the open water of these relationships, floating in an unresponsive, uncaring sea. Bru is kept waiting in a situation he cannot escape from which at all times threatens to consume him should he choose to stop fighting it. At times I think maybe Bru’s protagonist is not so much playing with this ambiguity between imitating panic and actually panicking, but refusing to commit to either, because in committing to one or the other, he would either be betraying his ego, or giving in to the helplessness of his situation. An impossible choice, so not choosing becomes the best option.
Metaphorical guff aside, this is all to say that through this album’s first half, Bru musically and artistically cuts an incredibly mature balance between self-seriousness and playfulness and does so in aid of the theme of the album.
After the transitioning interlude track, ‘OMENS’, which comes exactly halfway through the album- which takes a moment to jarringly (especially considering Bru’s back catalogue) blast off grinding synthesised bass hits- Bru shifts gears sonically and emotionally. Any of the bravado which existed within the first half has melted away. The confidence of firm kick-snare patterned passages slips away into more uncertain musical waters. In this half, Bru explores the insecurity, both emotional and literal, which his water treading induces. How I imagine it, it is as if after treading water all day, playfully waving, the day turns to night and there is no longer anyone to wave too; no one to convince he’s not drowning. The only person he must convince now is himself.
Sonically the mix shifts in this back half. There are less ‘bitter-sweet’ chord progressions. In their stead, there are more churning uncertain ones which feel like they suspend themselves unnervingly. The structural complexity also increases on the tracks ‘DONT LOOK DOWN’ and ‘LONG NIGHT OUT/ 4:14 AM’, with Bru controverting the stable trajectories of these tracks into icier and more isolated territories. The gear shift on ‘DON’T LOOK DOWN’ is the most singularly stunning moment on the album, wrenching Bru’s vocal from a lucid and confident “I don’t know why the fuck you would tell about it”, down into a murky hole of self-doubt and anxious insecurity: “They always look down on me” he says with uncharacteristic despondence.
On ‘LONG NIGHT OUT/ 4:14 AM’ where Bru gives us what I consider to be his most intriguing offering on NOLAND, offering the most warped and uneasy soundscape on the project, evoking an all consuming and visceral sea-sickness. An anxious drone swirls around as Bru croons, his vocal held in a resonant metallic chamber- his voice prickles like static heat, creating a deeply unsettling claustrophobia. Bru in a stand-out moment on the track synthetically contorts his vocal (in a way that echoes some of the more off-kilter and distraught sounding James Blake cuts) to beautiful but bone-chilling effect. Bru has experimented with noisy and disturbing sonic palettes before (the song “yellow”, may it rest in peace, was an example of this), but here Bru better integrates that disturbing, sickening feeling more seamlessly into his usual alternative R&B stylings showing a huge development in his artistic maturity.
The last phase of ‘LONG NIGHT OUT/ 4:14 AM’ has Bru spitting out a white-hot vocal, coming across as becoming belligerent with the state of things which he has previously lain out in the song lyrically. Constantly reversing hard kicks and slinking snare shots slip into the mix and a quietly riffing acoustic guitar also hangs in the back, giving the end of the track a Wicca Phase Spring Eternal type of feel. “When I tell my friends about you I just feel alone”. A line that gets me tearing up everytime I think about it. God that hurts. This last passage feels like regret for having ever been vulnerable; a lover’s remorse.
‘LONG NIGHT OUT/ 4:14 AM’ is thematically holographic in that, at one angle it is a heartfelt call out to his romantic other: “Your bed is my grave…You resurrect me with your kisses”; “Fly me to bed”. But viewed at an incremental shift, the song is a crushing admission of insecurity and crippling dependence on a romantic other; his beseeching, which earlier on the album was heartfelt, is now heartbreaking. Bru’s reliance on this person throughout this track is not sexualised or romanticised as it is elsewhere, but his calling upon this person reveals his lack of internal stability. An inability to rely on himself as much as he relies on this person.I can’t emphasise enough how incredibly narratively fulfilling this arch is for me as a listener. It makes NOLAND an album which must be listened to in its entirety.
In its back end of NOLAND, Bru returns to a more tender candour. With ‘POSTER BOY’ the vocals are the most reverb drenched as they get, conveying a mood more lonely than anything else on NOLAND, accompanied only by a guitar and distant vocal overdubs. In his verses Bru admits his shortcomings without irony: “I refrain from saying how I really feel”. His vocals soar upwards, breaking into multi-tracked falsettos, Bon Iver style. Despite his vocal self-accompaniment, this does nothing to mitigate the inconsolable loneliness and isolation which the track portrays.The confessional tone of the track is elevated by the church-like reverberations of Bru’s voice. Lyrically and vocally the track is a highlight, though instrumentally I feel it leaves a bit to be desired.
The final track ‘ACQUIESCENCE’ is fittingly ambiguous in its resolution to the album. On this track Bru croons over organ chords. “I left you way too long; Isn’t it a shame I could never be the one?”. This signals a surrender to the pointlessness of his whole water borne excursion. Bru’s vocal performance here climbs into the highest reaches of his register and flutters there, to then tragically pirouette back down. The song ends with a candid recording of Bru and frequent collaborator, Will Materialise (Tom from The Rudder, actually) sharing a casual conversation about filming something. Though a small touch, it effectively serves to ground (or land?) both Bru and us as listeners. We are invited to tread solid ground again.
NOLAND is a fantastically cohesive project thematically which rewards repeat listens (and at a humble 26 mins,it is an easy time sink). Bru seemingly effortlessly exhibits a natural talent as a vocalist and here displays rapidly developing skills as a songwriter and producer. Bru also unveils an incredibly vital and authentic vulnerability, not only as a person but as an artist. He is pushing forwards with an experimental edge which may throw off casual listeners, but that stretches the boundaries of the genre he is working in.
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Jack, 11 March 2023
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