Brown Bread – Cucciola 7.2

                Brown Bread is a strange bedroom project of Astoria native Rebecca Doerfer. Even though it is a rather small EP, there are a lot of different styles and approaches thrown into these five tracks. Ranging from the giddiness of “the 1 I love” to the dusty sounds of “hide seek”, it overwhelms me a bit in how to describe all that’s going on here. Let’s start with the first track. 

                The first track’s skeletal drum programming reminds me of Weed’s EP ‘DC Hope’. Perhaps there’s a bit more emphasis on a higher fidelity than what he offered. “The one I love” is odd. It has a constant music box melody over children’s laughter and wordless singing.

                “hide seek” is probably my favorite. On this track, it is kept so absolutely basic. No percussion exists. There isn’t any singing. You’re left with a tense, expansive mood. I feel this is my favorite song on the entire EP. Simplicity is usually the best for me and the execution for this track doesn’t make me want for anything. 

                Finally there are the last two songs. “White Gold” sounds a bit like lo-fi Le Tigre. I enjoyed this one a lot as well. They spent some time on figuring out how to pace the song. “(y)oohoo” uses environmental sounds such as the sound of rain. It felt like a good closer to me. 

                I liked the middle part of this EP the best. “hide seek” and “White Gold” are my favorites off of it. Some of the descriptors were a bit humorous to me as I didn’t feel so much a grunge feel. Rather, I felt the music had a dreamier, more distant vibe to it. Hopefully Brown Bread continues to improve, as this EP is a big improvement off of her last EP “is dead”. Here’s hoping.

Struggle of the Bedroom musician

Life is hard for the bedroom musician. Nobody respects a guy who goes up to an audience and mumbles into a microphone:

“Hi, I’m going to play songs from my laptop.”

Then for the next 45 minutes you see this guy pretend to jam out on a better laptop than the one you have at home. Of course, there’s always the chance that he’s just playing MP3s out of it as he’s winning solitaire games. Usually there’s one or two of their friends in the audience as plants. After the show they usually say what a great job the guy did nodding his head back and forth along with staring blankly at a computer monitor. 

Life is hard for these artists. It used to be acceptable to have those kinds of concerts. No longer can anyone tolerate it. You just don’t have the labels as interested. Each time a guy comes on stage with a laptop the audience groans. Only somebody like The Field, who plays decadent dance music, can get away with this. And even he included actual musicians on his second album.

Some labels like 12k, City Centre Offices, and a few others accept this as a legitimate art form. But for most, one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do. Waking up in the morning and writing MP3s just has been sort of frowned upon. Thus, you either need absolutely amazing material (Like Washed Out), or, more realistically, you need to flesh out your live sound with a full band, like what Toro Y Moi does (and should continue to do).

Besides the obvious joy of having actual friends, being a bedroom artist now carries a derogatory connotation, like you can only be bothered with this before you go to sleep or after you wake up. Heaven forbid you actually spent time on making this good. See Jandek as a bedroom artist for further evidence that there’s something a little off about it.

Plus (and this might be the most important) without those other bands members, you’ll never get sweet advertising money. Do you really think that WAVVES would be as successful if he didn’t have Mountain Dew? Of course not, he’d be living on the streets. Just like Twin Shadow is the spokesperson for Robitussin, or the Polyphonic Spree advertises for Prozac. It just makes sense, and having a creepy, lonely dude explain that to you doesn’t have the same effect. 

So if you’re going the route of bedroom musician, fine. You can write those songs in your PJs, but keep in mind at some point, if you become successful, you’ll need a group of musicians good enough to learn the songs but not good enough to actually make it on their own. Perhaps you have a music teacher friend, or a guy who does weddings. It doesn’t matter so much where they are from, but that they will propel you to another level. As you grow together, you’ll gain access to Converse’s recording label and someday use Motel 6’s warm welcome to all touring artists.

A-level doesn’t involve being alone anymore.