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(2021) Old Sea Brigade - Motivational Speaking [FLAC]
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Atlanta-born and Nashville-based, Old Sea Brigade is multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter Ben Cramer. Motivational Speaking is his second full-length album of synth-infused softly sung Americana, opening with the relaxed walking beat rhythm of ‘How It Works’, which, in keeping with the album title, is a musing on observing and accepting change as he sings “I’m learning to let go/I’m building a life/Now I can look at the scars/And not think of the knife”. Although written some years back, the bubbling, scampering rhythm ‘Day By Day’, a song about being trapped in a life of post-breakup (“I think of you growing old and it breaks my heart”) isolation (“Darkness it comes and puts me in place/I’m a prisoner babe you know I can’t escape”) clearly now takes on a more contemporary resonance, musically at times calling to mind Barenaked Ladies. A slower, moodier, more atmospheric and slightly spacey affair, Salt, with its mellotron and banjo and taking the idea of salt in the wound, is another fuelled by end of relationship feelings (“Salt/Till it heals again/Salt/Just can’t be your friend”), the reflective disposition continuing into the cello coloured steady walking beat piano ballad Nothing Clever, here a memory that runs from the rush of a beginning (“My mouth near your mouth/Working out if we’re aloud to say the things we feel out loud/You wanted me to go first/You waited for me to speak”) to and ending and the sad poignancy of the stagnation of familiarity (“We started this thing on fire/Now we’re a quiet glow/It’s not like there’s no desire/Just so much more we know”). Acoustic and with a dreamier, summery feel, the breathily sung American Impressions has a more upbeat tenor (“Can we share the laughter over same jokes every night/You know they never seem to get old/I think they’ll stand the test of time”), even if the lyrics suggest this romantic idyll is more in the imagination than reality, the glow of that notion still shimmering through the simple mandolin strum of Caroline (“There you were in my head/Not a stranger yeah you’d come to life/Tangible, in a fever yeah I dreamed we danced… If we met and I asked your name/Would you say Caroline”). A co-write with Luke Sital-Singh, the dream-pop Mirror Moon launches the second half with an upbeat but simple and repeated synth, bass, guitar and drums melody line, the vocals slightly mixed back on another lyric that feels pertinent to current conditions (“I thought I knew my ups and downs/But everything is stranger now/I wonder when we’ll land back safe/ Will anything feel the same”). Introducing bouzouki to the mix and somehow conjuring Brian Wilson, High Times has more of a driving rhythm underpinned by a circular drum pattern and pulsing synth and another lyric about change (“Here’s a toast to new beginnings…Try and change the chemicals, chemicals/That turn my head inside out”) but also how the rush never lasts “And boredom’s all I have”. The longest track at five minutes, the intimately-sung Walls is a lo-fi affair, floating along on ruminative twangsome guitar and drum machine pulses that again concerns the flux of relationships that moves from “I’ve got you I think you’ve got me too/Imagine a time where we won’t ever lose/Build me something special I can fall down with/Let’s go sign all the roots so they discover it” to “I get so sick of the rain/Does it always have to come with change/Are you leaving here again”. It enters the final stretch with dobro and bouzouki accompanying the acoustic guitar core of the delicately cascading chords of Still, a puttering rhythm washed with heartsease electric guitar waves that speak of more positive thoughts about embracing change (“I learn to live with it/I learn to deal with it…I’ll crawl out of this…You said it’s not/A burden but a gift/I guess I’ll go with it”) even while being “Just terrified of swimming in the deep” that ends on the wonderful image of “We’ll wash the dishes in the morning because tonight we’re going to dance on our toes”. Again that permanence/impermanence motif returns with the muted bittersweet baritone guitar notes of Come Tomorrow with its wanting to hold back the day (“If I had one more night/I think we’d laugh and drink more wine/So I don’t lay here while you sleep/Thinking sun don’t come don’t come for me”), of the need to leave (“It’s getting late/Can’t miss the plane”). It ends, then, on 4th of July. Independence Day, a slow waltz with simple instrumentation of piano, trumpet, clarinet and saxophone that closes on a note of positivity and acceptance, of moving forward after a relationship comes to an end rather than looking back (“After the dawn I was able/To take my first step unafraid/Independent of my old ways/Stole some new ground for today”), yet tempered by the line “I won’t think about you/Until the floats pass by in another year’s time/And right then I might miss you”. A gentle, wistful meditation on the instinctive tendency to cling to the past rather than move forward to find emotional healing, closure and a new tomorrow, it’s both poignantly sad and yet ultimately hopeful, and, as per the title, to seek and embrace motivation rather than be imprisoned by resignation.
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