Rockwoods wasn’t a great fit earlier this year, Joe’s Pub is a better venue, with a larger stage and a better vibe for this soulful folk man, or do I mean this folkie soulman, it will give him the room he needs to perform (the Brooklyn Bowl gig was better because the stage was larger), and Joe’s Pub is for adults, it is part of the Public Theatre, it is pop as art venue.
17 albums isn’t bad for January, last year there where only 13 albums on my best of list at this point. Also, the rate of excellence is through the roof. Especially hip hop where from Lupe Fiasco to Joey BadA$$ and beyond it is on. Top of the heep i a huge album by David Bronson. A deal changer.
The week belongs to David Bronson’s eagerly anticipated Questions, an album so good it makes albums a palatable art form and forum with songs so strong they should last the whole year through. Otherwise: Meghan Trainor, The 1978ers, Kat Dahlia, and Panda Bear all released excellent albums.
A good week all round, Bronson on top, Shinobi next, two good rap song, a Kweezy ballad, JTW back, some real cool ska and roll. Let’s hope this is the start of a great year and if we get another ten songs as great as “Song Of Life”and “Honey Trap” it may well be
considering there are only five albums here, three of them, the last three, are must owns and first among equals is the eagerly awaited came changer for David Bronson. It is hard to guess in this day and age whether an album will find its target audience, but if Bronson does get his songs where they need to be, he will break into the mainstream with Questions.
If I have one wish for 2015 musically, it is that David Bronson’s excellent January release Questions finds the audience it deserves. This sublime art folk rock soul album should break him, must break him. It is what I want, it is what he deserves, I wanna say I knew him before he stopped taking my phone calls.
“Entertainment Weekly” premiered the video on Thursday December 11th, featuring Bronson and the Alomar family plus two members of the Bronson band in a sun swept SUV and enveloped in the moment
David takes to the audience like he takes to people in the real world, he makes you at ease, ready to be part of his family and then he levels you with the intensity of his playing. It is as though he sees no reason why artistry must be self-important. At Rockwood he shared his stage so generously while remaining the focal point.
The question is what is is David Bronson’s upcoming release Questions. Now, the answer is the one concert this week you just don’t dare miss, And the question is what is Bronson at Rockwood on Friday. With guest stars including the great guitarist Carlos Alomar and his full band behind, it will be powerful stuff no doubt. I just hope Bronson doesn’t short change Questions just because it isn’t released yet!
The question, the opinion, the axiom Bronson has found is superb “outside I hear a songbird and I think she has it right, she is just singing, she is not asking why”. There is a deep and simple truth here and a song to back it up
It is just a great great vibe, with producer Godfrey Diamond and lynchpin Robbie Seahag still here and Carlos Alomar and Robin Clark joining the team of music fans and friends and musicians in creating something really quite wonderful.
A few of my own personal favorites of an overall brilliant set were the absolutely on fire Smokestack Lightning toward the end (this is where TD broke his second string) and a medley he did of some songs from a forthcoming record, co-written by Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, as well as the aforementioned David Barnes harp solo
Bronson is both an original and a throwback to an earlier age of popular music, where the sound in a person’s head is all encompassing and needs to be sculpted into the way they want it heard: it has the delicacy of time and purpose. and it will be a pleasure to hear Bronson express this
Sure, you know Sam Smith through Disclosure’s “Latch” but if that’s not enough? The man has soul to burn and if you don’t believe me listen to the Londoner’s Nirvana EP or ask Taylor Swift who invited him to sing at her O2 gig ir best of all, check out Monday’s gig at Webster Hall. Sold out, of course.
This looks like a solo tour to me and Bronson is that rarity who is quite at home by himself as with a band. With a band you get the heft of sound but solo you can hear the songs (and such great songs) and it is wonderful to hear how easily they break down to just acoustic guitar.
The feeling was a quietly vibrating, exuberant joy, one characterized not by hysteria, volume, or grandiosity, but by gentle, light, yet still extreme, beauty. And I can’t stress enough how much feeling was present in that room
At 41 minutes the album is like a play cut into separate scenes but more like a play of the mind where everything is happening at once; it doesn’t feel linear, it feels as if the story is occurring simultaneously, and so less than a story and more like a series of emotions going through change after change and ending in anger
Bronson does self-conscious, a prodigiously gifted songwriter who has spent the past decade recording, arranging, writing and re-writing what is simultaneously his magnum opus and his first work
The Long Lost – David Bronson – The prequel to Story is, at its best, just about the most deliriously deep and beautiful music you will here this year but so lost in its sorrow it can be difficult to penetrate
It is like a 70s pro-rock placed underneath an early 1970s singer-songwriter and at Fonatana in February, the singer songwriter won out and on Saturday night the prog rock artist weirdo won out and on both nights the audience won out.
On A Carousel – The Hollies – This is the sound of the timeless clang of pure pop for now people in the heat of the UK Invasion. Immaculate harmonies, melodies, lyrics and Nash’s first lead singing on the A Side of a single- A+
