Brookville: Life in the Shade
By
Evan Sawdey 31 July 2006PopMatters Interviews Editor
Opening with a great Coldplay knockoff called “Blue Morning”, Brookville’s second LP is nothing if not melodic. However, the simple strings, warm synth blankets, and hushed horns serve more as a generic-rock lullaby than a solid album. Sure, the modern-lounge sounds of “Nothing’s Meant to Last” and guitar/synth/horn sweep of “Golden” are fine songs, but the track-to-track differentiation gets vaguer as the album presses on. And at 59 minutes, Brookville centerpiece (and Ivy co-founder) Andy Chase’s generic-to-the-point-of-boredom lyrics really push the meaning of an album so-appropriately titled Life in the Shade. Without irony, the title track happens to be the worst lite-rock offender of the bunch. The Shade is nice, but it’s doubtful you’ll want to spend a lifetime in it (or even an hour, for that matter).
Evan Sawdey began contributing to PopMatters in late 2005 after contributing for years to his college newspaper
The Knox Student. Evan became the Associate Interviews Editor for PopMatters in the summer of 2008, and then the full Interviews Editor a year after that. Since joining, Evan's work has been written for and been quoted/featured in a wide array of publications including SLUG Magazine, The Metro (U.K.), Soundvenue Magazine (Denmark), the Daily Dot, and multiple national newspapers. Evan has been a guest on WNYC's Soundcheck (an NPR affiliate), was the Executive Producer for the
Good With Words: A Tribute to Benjamin Durdle album (available for free at
GoodWithWordsAlbum.com), and wrote the liner notes for the 2011 re-release of
Andre Cymone's hit 1985 album A.C. (Big Break Records) and the 2012 re-releases of
Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder's standalone 1985 pop effort (Virgin/Gold Legion),
the JoBoxers' 1983 debut album Like Gangbusters,
'Til Tuesday's 1985 debut Voices Carry, and
Plastic Bertrand's 1978 album AN 1 (all Hot Shot Records). He is a current member of The Recording Academy and resides in Chicago, Illinois. You can follow him
@SawdEye should you be so inclined.
Brookville -- "Nothing's Meant to Last"
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