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Artist
Paul Brill
12+ albums
indieUSAmale singer-songwritersAllLike
about
New York City Native Paul Brill first chipped his musical teeth on the icy landscape of Northern Vermont, wood-shedding and 4-tracking while holed-up in a bleak, rustic cabin. After a few light-deprived winters, Brill sold his belongings and fled for sunny western shores, dabbling in brief stints as an herbal smokes salesman, street performer, valet, corporate errand boy, and marine biology instructor before finding sure footing in the sand. After playing the major label cat-and-mouse game with a band in San Francisco, Paul was soon lured home to NYC, his songwriting similarly taking striking new turns. Brill’s first releases, including the well-received Sisters EP and LP combo, were vulnerable and plaintive twang-kissed affairs that showcased a thoughtful songwriting presence. New Pagan Love Song, which merged earlier works’ acoustic elements with found sounds, samples, and bent beats, avoided a number of the clichés and self-indulgent foibles of the acoustic guitar-meets-electronics crowd. It was a record made by a songwriter genuinely interested in the possibilities of electronic experiments in songwriting. It was an album of comfortable melancholy that took critics by storm. Harpooner continues further down that path, incorporating heavy-duty cut-and-paste collage elements for a work that comes off like a fever dream. It’s a song of reckoning, a last gasp. Its nine tales regard plague, mental illness, misanthropy, and much salt water. In this thoroughly dismantl
