Vol. I | Heartbreaking Bravery

April 11, 2019

Dreaming Out Loud: Vol. 1 (Ben Morey and Katie Preston)

As some readers may have noticed, Heartbreaking Bravery’s editorial aspect has been waning in recent times. A large part of this is due to the fact that it’s still a single-person operation, which has resulted in scheduling conflicts. At some point it became clear that Heartbreaking Bravery simply couldn’t exist in the way it did in the past, which is why I started looking towards the future. When 2019 draws to a close, the flagship site will cease regular updates. The site will still remain active, at least for a time, but Heartbreaking Bravery will continue in other ways.

One of those ways is Dreaming Out Loud, an idea I’ve clung to for some time. After having good experiences conducting acoustic sessions for The Media (All Dogs, Mitski) and Consequence of Sound (Johanna Warren), the impulse to attach that format to Heartbreaking Bravery proved too irresistible. The name Dreaming Out Loud comes from the Tenement song, which has appeared in various versions throughout the band’s discography, as a way of honoring the impact that band had on my own musical development and the core of this site’s existence.

While Heartbreaking Bravery won’t solely be relegated to this series after the editorial function dies down, I’m hoping it becomes a definitive aspect of what this site leaves in its wake.

Ben Morey (Ben Morey and the Eyes) and Katie Preston (Pleistocene, solo) have the distinction of anchoring the first volume of the series. When Morey and Preston arrived at my apartment, the two had recently gotten engaged and were in the midst of a whirlwind tour that had taken on a freeing, celebratory bent. Preston accompanied Morey and Morey returned the favor as the two took turns trotting out new material. The session culminated by a stop at the lake for a gorgeous Everly Brothers cover that saw the two of them on equal ground, each happy to have found a worthy partner.

Watch Dreaming Out Loud: Vol. I below and subscribe to the Heartbreaking Bravery YouTube channel for future installments of the series.

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Purchase Ben Morey’s With Birds here and Katie Preston’s Soap Opera here.

April 30, 2017

american poetry club – glad to be here, etcetera (EP Review)

In the past week Wendell Borton, Side Eye, Detenzione, Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Puppy Problems, Soft Fangs/Bellows, Kindling, moshimoss/stabilo, Wilsen, and GRLMIC all unveiled full streams of various types of records. The landmark Our First 100 Days compilation also came to its natural conclusion. On the quieter, less-publicized side of things, american poetry club’s glad to be here, etcetera — packaged with I Love to Surf’s Mantras as a split EP release — was also made available to the public.

A deeply felt bedroom pop recording from Jordan Weinstock (who runs the excellent It Takes Time Records), glad to be here, etcetera is the sound of creative restlessness. Collaborators trickle in, a sample gets used, and one lonely narrative after another crops up. There’s a lot of resentment present in glad to be here, etcetera, typically manifesting in self-deprecation or self-loathing (and never as strongly as it does on the EP’s closing track) but there are softer moments scattered throughout, specifically “how i felt about most things”, which boasts a simplistic but oddly affecting video that’s premiering right here:

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More than any other song on glad to be here, etcetera, this one feels complete. Fully formed, deeply felt, and brimming with genuine emotion, “how i felt about most things” grapples with a much larger scale than most of the other songs on the record. Instead of just introspection, it’s a meditation on love, familial love, mortality, aging (and being forced to age), and a handful of other weighty topics. It’s easily the strongest composition on the record (the piano figure at the end is the EP’s loveliest moment) and it suggests Weinstock will be saying a lot more things with american pooetry club in the future. A gorgeous moment on a very strong EP, “how i felt about most things” affirms one basic truth: glad to be here, etcetera is worthy of any serious collection.

Listen to glad to be here, etcetera below and pick it up here.

December 1, 2016

Nothing Stops In November: The Month’s Full Streams

A lot changed over the course of November, on national, global, and intimate scales. The results of the latter category led to a near-absence of posts over the past 30 days on this space. No matter how much the personal landscape changed, the tracking of new releases remained a constant. While the last post documented some of the best music videos to emerge over the course of that run, the attention here falls to the full streams that were unveiled in that same interim.

As is typically the case with these types of roundups, everything here deserves more praise than it can possibly receive here and is likely best sifted through at a leisurely pace. Feel free to bookmark the page and make return visits to hear some outstanding music because these aren’t releases that people will want to miss. Dive in and enjoy.

Permit, Lawn, Swampmeat, Minihorse, Deerhoof, Retail, The Momotarōs, Spelling Reform, Very Fresh, Dark Blue, Skin Lies, Nine of Swords, Harmony Tividad, Miracle Sweepstakes, Monomyth, Pure Moods, if i die in mississippi, Mustardmind, Frank Weysos, Tuffy, Dr. Dog, Jess Williamson, Pastel Felt, Floating Room, Mark Sultan, Landing, Psychic Love, His Clancyness, Blank Range, Dogs At Large, Mr. Universe, Carroll, Warm Ouroboros, NGHTCRWLRS, Ava Mendoza/Maxime Petit/Will Guthrie, You Blew It.