All tagged Corduroy Brown

Review - Corduroy Brown: Doin' My Best

Review - Corduroy Brown: Doin' My Best

Phillip Ring

We, here at The Amp, have covered Corduroy Brown since his debut release Let Me Know in 2021. There’s an energy to the work with a bold mix of elements of Americana and pop music,  encompassing lyrical content that swirls around themes of mental health, relationships, near death experiences and material that can cause music to be uncomfortably dark. With that introduction you may expect some dark gothic downtempo struggle music, but you won’t find much of that in the catalog. With the pain, distress, struggle that weave through the lyrics of the work, there’s electricity of hope that breathes life into the material. There’s always a reminder that you don’t win wars without scars, you don’t get better without work, and you don’t build character without obstacles.

Corduroy Brown: Rest

Corduroy Brown: Rest

Phillip Ring

In August of 2021, we at The Amp were handed the debut record of Corduroy Brown Let Me Know and were surprised at the record as a whole. It was an indie rock powerhouse of a record that was part jubilation, part confusion, but all heart. Coming off of a fairly traumatic year, it was a record of piecing together what happens after the noise dies down and you’re left in silence to pick up some pieces. This release picks up in a lot of ways where that record left off. The main difference is that the Rest EP strips away the jubilant compositions and strips them down to in most cases an instrument and a voice. It’s vulnerable and exposing which can be tough for a lot of artists, because in that setting when things are that simplified, every piece has to be right, and with this record, it is. 

Corduroy Brown: Let Me Know

Corduroy Brown: Let Me Know

Phillip Ring

Albums come along that pose questions. Some of them are interesting. Some of them are less interesting, and yet more are mundane. Corduroy Brown’s Let Me Know asks how do you take a life threatening, life altering event and find something positive in it? How do you express fear, relief, and joy, while exercising reverence for obstacles most of us are fortunate enough to not have a baseline for? How do you accomplish all of that without being preachy, or worse, cheesy?

Let Me Know answers all of these brilliantly, in a way that’s a joy to listen to. In a room of special albums, this album is still special. It comes with a sense of true humility, wonder and a kindness that’s becoming ever more rare. It’s a truly inspired, and inspiring, album.