Album Review: Brother Townsend (Heavy Hands)
Reviewed by Harry Kaplan
Four songs and the release clocks in at 24 minutes. Having four rather long songs is quite an undertaking, but Brother Townsend rises to the occasion. An unconventional melding of blues, pop, rock, cosmic country, and psychedelia is the signature of this release. What it may give up in quantity, it more than makes up for in quality. All four songs are expertly crafted. Discipline is also the operative word here. While the album is entitled “Heavy Hands,” the production, mixing, and engineering is surprisingly light and ambient. Lots of open space to let the listener reflect on the music without being overwhelmed with production gimmicks. All the instrumentation is spot on and the fills, while sometimes understated, are all in the right place at the right time. It is hard to keep a listener engaged for six-plus minutes of a song but Brother Townsend executes perfectly.
I will begin at the end, instead of the beginning. All On Me is the closing track on this collection, but last does not mean least. What an absolute powerhouse of a song. It starts slow and quietly and works up to a crescendo. It is the perfect blending of hard and soft. In fact the drums and electric guitars don’t even get started until the one minute-and-forty second mark. But when they do hit, they make a definitive statement that is impossible to rebut. They hit their marks perfectly and that staggered start is just brilliant. Coupled with Kristina Ziese’s pitch-perfect backing vocals, this is a keeper. Although I cannot fully articulate it in words, I can use this song to demonstrate real craft. Not just craft, but feeling and emotion come through loud and clear. Another example where less is more.
Time to introduce the team behind the release. Brett Townsend handles lyrics, guitar, and vocals, with Billy Winters on lead guitar, Kristina Ziese adding bass and harmony vocals, Andrew Rudd on drums, and Pete Remine on pedal steel. Behind the board, Bill Yates serves as engineer and producer, while Troy Glessner handles mastering. It is a compact group, but everyone has a clearly defined role, and that economy of personnel fits the music itself: nothing feels overcrowded, and every contribution has room to breathe.
The undercurrent of blues and psychedelia runs through this release like a main circuit cable. From the first track, Storm, the tone is firmly set. This track starts out like Wang Dang Doodle performed by Dire Straits. Another song that starts a little slowly out of the gate but consistently builds momentum until the train is humming at 90 to 100 miles an hour. If this song were a racehorse, it would be a closer. That is a horse that starts off the pace and slowly adds speed until it is in the lead. Well, that is the way it is supposed to work. Storm is the “Zenyatta” of the song world and definitely ends up in first place by the end of the track. “I bet you feel it in your bones.”
The shortest song on this collection that clocks in at a stealthy 4:46 is East Of Eden. This little ditty is a blues-based number with plenty of ambient sound and a vocal styling that Tom Waits would not kick out of bed for eating crackers. This song is about temptation and being lured by sometimes not-so-nice forces that are beyond our control. Another track that uses ambient sound to create a tapestry of cosmic sound that puts me in an altered state. A shout-out to Pete Remine for some otherworldly pedal steel fills that make this song glow like red-hot embers.
Sometimes those little surprises really give an exclamation point to being alive. Taking a walk and finding a wild raspberry bush, hiking to a waterfall in the middle of nowhere and finding that you are the only one there, and discovering Heavy Hands by Brother Townsend all on my own. Yes, I listened to many releases before I got to the crowned jewel, but the important thing is that I got to the crowned jewel. And this jewel also shines and will help to enrich your life, sonically speaking.
Listen and buy Heavy Hands here.