GutterPutter

People can complain about how much unnecessary politics or conflict is in our face now, yet climate change is a giant that must be confronted in the near future. You can feel the rising temperature every passing day with each summer surpassing the last as being the hottest it has ever been. Wildfires, habitat destruction & a dying biodiversity would dominate the headlines for the time being, but once it’s out of the spotlight, activists will be up in arms about the urgency of the shifting environment.

G. Brenner isn’t one of those activists; he initially tried to have a splash into the music scene back in the mid-2010s with an unrecognised EP under a different stage name of Pastel. As a relatively new face around the underground scene, his style can be an enigma with how unknown he is to many others including myself. Brushfire may not have the personal context to garner even an understanding for who he is nor are we aware of the noteworthy acts that inspire him to make music. What it does have is a work of choral singing, dreamy atmospheric beats & cryptic lyricism – all boiling down to a hymnal call to arms for change against the apocalypse. It’s a spectacle of a diamond underneath the rough.

The beginning in the title track is inspired by news around the fire that spread around the U.S, but the conviction within the lyrics makes an allegory out of the tale. Describing the hypothetical fire that burns Santa Ana from the environment (‘Just another average day’), the nonchalance contrasts with the radio sample warning about the fire threat & the industrial beat that pounds hard. Most notably, there lies a kind of mythological remaking within the demise that is reminiscent of the phoenix or the book of Revelations:

‘Feel my skin begin to open up

Ashes filling up my chest

Death descends to right the wrong

Of a body that life gave

‘All my crumbling ribs disintegrate

As I break away and float

Towards a different me, a different time

Maybe there I’ll feel whole’

What I love about this extract as an example is the semantic field of fire & burning to a point where it’s not so much on the environment as it is about life & death. The way that Brenner describes his metamorphosis to being just ashes as he enters into an ethereal plane of existence is mind-binding over its subtle take on fantasy. The one-liner summary of karma & reincarnation exhumes an instance of thoughtfulness without coming off as being overtly pretentious. Even the activeness of Brenner’s voice as he engenders the idea of escaping his physical body to stray from his sins shows a greater drive for change than most musicians ever could. I can’t help but feel impressed by the poetry in his words as he quips about the dangers of one’s body which is akin to an erudite’s take on Catharism.

‘Moon Landing’ & ‘Dee Dee’ were both another tracks that deals with the idea of the body as a spirit’s cage with the former having a largely ambient folk feel in the first half. The latter, on the other hand, has a droning kind of sound to build a crescendo before ending in an IDM-like rhythm. It’s not what one would think as being climatic, but I personally find it to be fitting given the despondent ending on the inability to escape from the shifting climate.

Of course, bodily matters isn’t the only thing that is of concern in the album. ‘Cul-De-Sac’ turns the ideal domestic life over its rear & with Brenner’s charismatic tenor, mixed it in with the sense of dread within the ecclesiastical upheaval of the neighbourhood. The twinkling piano & the echoing production adds a sense of grandeur that makes its warning hard to ignore. ‘Malignant’ contrasts the neo-soul melody of Brenner with the urgent industrial snares & frightening bowing of the violin as he decries the greed of the oligarchy. The result being riveting to the progressives at its very core.

‘Caustic’ is simple as Brenner express his fears to us amidst the layered harmonies & the organs that plays with the spectre of the ambient sound. The tint of crackling in the end shows a nearing to the end of his life which makes ‘Mudslide’ all the more impactful as the electronic sounds start to clamour into the Biblical threats. The transition from when Brenner warns that nature will ‘[take] back what’s theirs’ to a Kid A-like instrumental is nothing short of off-kilter as the glitch-hop invades the whole track. It demands your attention if you want a convincing take on saving the planet.

‘Spirits’ is what I consider to be a weak link as I find Brenner’s vocally gifted performance to be a distraction given the confessional narrative & sparse instrumentation. The first half is mostly a bit of a snooze to try & endure, yet the third-fourth marks a heavenly collision between the production’s enhancement of Brenner’s voice & the piano accomplice that chimes with grace. If only the last quarter continues to expand that structure piece further on, we would have ourselves a star single in the avant-gospel.

It’s with ‘Over My Head’ that we end the album in a humble, disconcerting manner. G. Brenner simply sings ‘Over my head/ I hear music in the air’ as the sample of the burning fire gradually starts to get louder & louder. It’s until he somberly croons ‘There must be a God somewhere’ when we are only left with just under 2 minutes’ worth of burning that continues to roar until we manage to reach the end. Tragic is what I feel is the best summary for the final track as it wraps back around to ‘Brushfire’; an ouroboros of human selfishness if you may consider it as such. The melancholia that is left for all the pleading there is is alike to a gut-punch. There is no second chances in this world – either we must take the initiative & put the escalating speed of which the climate has shifted or we will all be engulfed in flames as implied in the end.

Compared with the likes of the Weather Station of whom my first review on this blog is about, G. Brenner is unafraid to telling us flat out how paramount it is for us to change for the better. The instrumentation mixes the harsh loudness of industrial to the gentility of the violin to wondrous effect & the operatic tenor of Brenner’s voice only adds to the magnitude of the situation ahead of us. He doesn’t act as a guide for the future so much as a bard who witnesses the end of civilization as we know it & his chants on the irreversible damage that is been done is nothing short of electrifying. Many artists have wanted to warn us of the dangers of climate change before Brenner, but few had surpassed the charm of which he breathes throughout Brushfire.