Archive for April, 2014

THE BELLE BRIGADE-2ND ALBUM RELEASED ON ATO RECORDS: “JUST BECAUSE”

Wednesday, April 2nd, 2014

Very happy and proud to see their 2nd album be received so well.
The Belle Brigade will be on tour all summer 2014 opening for Ray LaMontagne AND playing in his band.
Here is their first review on iTunes and All Music Guide:

The Belle Brigade’s Barbara and Ethan Gruska harmonize like the siblings they are, all fight or flight, sweetness and blight, and with a shared vibrato that sounds like it was dialed in via a singularity, but they also possess the kind of old-school, radio-ready craftsmanship that usually takes decades to hone, and their second long-player, the wise, wicked, wild, weary, and unapologetically hook-filled Just Because — unlike their excellent if a tad over-seasoned 2011 eponymous debut — sounds like the work of a band and not a committee. Front-loaded with a pair of immaculate, open-road, Los Angeles County gems in “Ashes” and “When Everything Was What It Was,” the former a propulsive, train whistle-led paean to the eternally unfair condition of being both lovesick and heartbroken, and the latter a deceptively sweet confection that masks its underlying darkness with Rumours-era Buckingham and Nicks pop acumen, the ten-track album is trim and tidy, but never slight. Melodically, the duo still owe a great deal to the two Pauls (Simon and McCartney), but the production and arrangements suggest a steady diet of Vampire Weekend, Passion Pit, and Tegan and Sara, especially on stand-out cuts like breezy, bright, and polyrhythmic “How I See It,” the unapologetically soaring and radio-ready “Everything for a Stone,” and the fleeting but highly contagious “Be Like Him.” Just Becausedoesn’t break down any walls in its bid for pop
ock superiority, but with voices this pure and earworms this painless it doesn’t have to, as the Gruskas have crafted a timeless-sounding collection of songs with contemporary tools, and most importantly, they’ve done it with finesse.
James Christopher Monger