By Álvaro Ramal
Four years after releasing their last album Do You Like Salt?, local art-punk four-piece BRNDA returns with the phenomenal Total Pain, a 12-song LP that blends the DIY sounds of D.C. punk and 60s Art Nouveau aesthetics with lyrical explorations of food, animals, and the relationship between pleasure and pain into one of the freshest projects of the year.
The band, composed of drummer and synth master Leah Gage, bassist Nick Stavely, and guitarists Mark McInerney and Dave Lesser (who also doubles as a clarinetist), has been pushing all sorts of boundaries since its genesis back in 2011 to its recent years with Pittsburgh-based indie label and friend of the blog, Crafted Sounds. With their characteristic Talking Heads-esque tongue-in-cheek style, collaborative vocal performances, and sheer eccentricity—qualities that made me fall in love with the band after seeing them live at the Plenty Happening show back in May—BRNDA has solidified itself as one of the most notable exports of D.C.’s music scene.
Total Pain opens with “Peach Pit,” a perfect thematic, instrumental, and lyrical preview of what you can expect for the next half hour. In an interview for the Washington City Paper, Lesser shared that they wrote “Peach Pit” about “being in a place you keep going back to despite knowing it’s not good for you.” Possibly presenting a connection to the album’s subtle zoological themes (see the beautiful album cover and 6th song, “Burn the Zoo”). Beyond Gage’s great vocals, supported perfectly by the three other members on the Parquet Courts’ “Total Football”-sounding bridge, the song’s standout, for me, is the unwavering production full of great guitar riffs and drum beats that explodes near the 1:30 mark.
The LP’s funky sounds and “talk-singing” continue into the next two songs, “Books are Bad” and “Whig Boys.” The first is one of the grooviest songs I’ve heard in a long time. Despite sounding somewhat detached nearing the song’s outro, the hypnotic and imaginative vocals are full of life, exuding a swagger that contrasts really well with the quirky tambourine and shaker-led production, as well as the backing track harmonies. Lesser and Gage’s perfect vocal pairing reaches another level in “Whig Boys,” an in-your-face harmonic journey full of references to different types of “boys” and food, such as whig boys, egg boys, wet boys, little toys, tater tots, garlic knots, and Motts apple sauce. Right at the end of the song, Gage comes in with deep existential queries about the pursuit of art and truth and the triviality of credit scores and material value, accompanied by a quick hand drum section. A clear-cut example of the sonic rollercoasters that have become BRNDA’s signature.
The band flexes their full weirdness entering the second half of the record. Songs like “Blenderman,” a deep dive into the relentless search for glory through minimal poetic rhythm, and the very wacky and experimental “Go for Gold” are standouts. The latter, for instance, features a deep clarinet section and vocal inflections from Lesser that sound more like the anxious ramblings of a drunkard than an indie-vocalist, all while Gage adds some soothing vocals to the song’s backdrop. The song right after, “Zebra,” also follows the route of unorthodox vocalizations with loud, stretched out lyrical references comparing different Zebra species with ancient board games that clash with a monotonal bridge and then are accentuated by a sudden noise & dance rock instrumental crescendo. A complicated puzzle that somehow fits perfectly together. The same can be said for Total Pain’s six-line closer, “My Mother,” and its almost unintelligible vocals that recount a motherly figure trying to make ends meet while cowbells and blown-up guitars tie everything up in a dysfunctional but thematically adequate bow.
HOWEVER, it’s in the album’s fifth track “Everyone Chicago” that BRNDA seals their place as true modern originals. This idiosyncratic logbook of Windy City fascination is straight up one of my favorite songs of the year. Lesser’s stream-of-conscious lyrical performance is full of descriptors of midwestern sights, including my favorite line in the whole project: “Lots of water, lots of lakes, lots of farms, lots of cars—BARS!” Instrumentally, the song is held up by constant drum beats, a deep bassline, and gritty guitar riffs, all complemented by a sleuthy flute solo by renowned D.C. flutist Mike Gillispie that elevates the song to an upper echelon of sound. Pure magic.
While the other songs on the record still maintain that off-the-wall creativity, they do have a chiller, more somber tone to them that enunciates the more emotive lyrical work of the band. These include the love letter to man’s best friend “MT Eyes,” the dedicated sermon to a certain Jenny, “Cool Night” (which features a great vocal performance from Gage paired with backing vocal harmonies and pretty simple indie-rock production), and “A Little Balloon,” Total Pain’s penultimate track that explores youth, aging, and family through monotonal vocals and another delicious Gillispie flute outro.
My personal standout from the solemn bunch, however, is “Burn The Zoo.” This charming and super infectious pro-animal manifesto sees McInerney deliver a clever critique of consumerism in which manatees become “sea cow burgers,” fruit bats and pangolins are “available for dine-in,” and monkeys are shipped to Buffalo. This sentiment is hammered in through the chant-like chorus (“Burn the zoo, burn the zoo, burn the zoo”) that directly calls for the fiery end of captivity that’d result in the liberation of the animals. The instrumental explosion that kicks in after the last line of the chorus gives me all the hope to believe that the mission was successful, sparking an unwavering friendship between the free human and the now free monkey (refer back to the beautiful album cover).
With Total Pain, BRNDA once again delivers their trademark concoction of experience, inspiration, talent, and a buttload of personality not just to D.C., but to the world. They embody the kind of artistry and uniqueness that remind us how great and vibrant the D.C. scene is and how important it is to keep preserving it.
Be sure to catch BRNDA at Songbyrd Music House on Oct. 19, the final date of their current slate of shows. Also, don’t forget to support them on Bandcamp! Buy a record, a song, investigate the lyrics, whatever… just show some love to one of the best musical projects that we’re sooo lucky to have and call our own.