Brother Elsey 2025
Photo: Luke Rogers / Missing Piece

Brother Elsey Capture the Scary Present in Their Debut LP

Brother Elsey rock out to ease their pain and share their feelings with the rest of us. It’s recommended that this album be played at a loud volume.

Brother Elsey
Brother Elsey
River House Artists
31 January 2025

Brother Elsey are three brothers: twins Brady on vocals and guitar with Beau on bass, older sibling Jack on guitar and close friend Dalton Thomas on drums. The three blood brothers share the last name of Stablein. However, the quartet named their act after the name of the brothers’ grandfather, Elsey. That’s why the act isn’t called the “Elsey Brothers” but “Brother Elsey”. That’s not particularly important, but it can be confusing.

In any case, Brother Elsey is a kick-butt Americana-style band combining meat and potato rock and roll with outsider country folk touches and an indie spirit. After three EPs, the group have released their first full-length album. The eponymously titled record reveals their brawny chops and sensitive souls. On the surface, the songs display a strong sensibility. The guitars and bass ring out loud and demand attention even when Brady offers to sing with an ache in his voice.

Most of the 13 tracks start relatively soft and low before building to loud climaxes. The formula is familiar and reminiscent of classic Midwestern rock from the last 25 years of the 20th century. Bob Seger and John Mellencamp are significant influences. However, the music here has more of an edge than past masters.

As Brady notes in “Bad Advice”, “I’ll do anything twice”, but this time, the Michigan natives take the music on different paths than their original influences. Perhaps this is because the band have moved to East Nashville and are more open to the Bohemian influence of their new digs. Tracks such as “Other Side of the End”, “Bolt Cutter Eyes”, and “Wrong Things” offer lyrics full of doubts instead of certainties.

The instrumentation, especially Thomas’ insistent drumming, matches the spirit of continuing even if one doesn’t know where one is headed. The songs are full of odd decorative touches (odd guitar riffs, disconnected bass lines, echoed vocals, and such) that suggest there are roads not taken. We might be “All alone and paralyzed,” as the song “Babylon” proclaims, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t on the highway to hell. This contradiction is the point.

That seems especially true of the current moment. Brother Elsey were prescient to develop songs that fit the current confusion. We live in a time when the meaning of recent events seems to be rewritten daily. The album is not political per se, but the meaning of lines like “it’s hard to know the truth,” “Hey on the bright side, nothing really matters anyway,” and “I’m in love with the red tape” from three different tracks lucidly convey our present anomie. “Hey, on the bright side, nothing really matters anyway,” Brady sings on “Silver Tongue”. But, of course, it does. The musical accompaniment reinforces the latent urgency behind not giving a shit.

The songs explicitly about love are no clearer about how one thinks and feels. “I thought I knew it all” begins the romantic “Need You Now” only to continue with “I was wrong”. Again, the confusion is the point (the need is presumably real). The music’s atmospheric sonics capture the disorientation. That may be the result of love or just the need for love. Brother Elsey rock out to ease their pain and share their feelings with the rest of us. It’s recommended that this album be played at a loud volume.

RATING 7 / 10
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