Excelling at the sort of sonically rich chamber pop that drives Brian Wilson fans to light up the switchboards, 25-year-old songwriter and former Marine Brenden Norwood, on his self-produced debut EP Miss The Point, blends immaculate production with colorful arrangements, deploying instrumentation that includes oboe, trumpet, ukulele, upright piano, and harmonica alongside the expected guitar, bass, and drums. Throughout, Norwood and his band provide ample space to allow Norwood’s sharp, heartfelt, and clever songs to breathe, ably providing soft landings for their refreshingly unexpected rhythmic and harmonic detours.
The lyrically deft songs on Miss The Point occasionally recall both the dramatic art school tension of Shearwater and the postmodern meme-pop of Jack Stauber, throwing in a touch of mid-90s indie-exotica vibes for good measure. The suitably infectious “Really Catchy Song” splits the difference between Sparks’ impish whimsy and Stephin Merritt’s droll wit, as Norwood delivers the lyrics in a kind of languorous, tuneful yawn: “It’s a really catchy song to do your taxes to / a really catchy song to commit tax fraud.” Elsewhere, “Walled-in” offers a serpentine groove recalling some of McCartney’s more madcap confections, while “Closer” possesses the kind of beach bum charm you might reasonably expect from a release on a label called Island House. There are, however, subtle threads of displacement and inner conflict corking through Norwood’s lyrics like debris dropping into a pan of fresh paint, as Norwood uses his songs to constructively process the bipolar disorder with which he was diagnosed upon leaving the Marines in early 2020. The samba-inflected title track even poses a classic existential question: “what is this life for?” Depending on your perspective, Norwood’s subsequent chorus either directly addresses this question or sidesteps it altogether: “If I worry too much, I’ll just miss the point.” Ambiguous or not, it’s as good a response as any, and sage advice, too. An exciting debut.
credits
released July 14, 2023
All tracks were produced, engineered, and mixed by Jeremy Gustin at the The Loom studio in Brooklyn, NY.
Mime Has An Existential Crisis:
Melodica, sax, voice: Brenden Norwood
Oboe, drums, voice: Jeremy Gustin
Guitar: Will Graefe
Bass: Ryan Dugre
Miss the Point:
Sax, voice: Brenden Norwood
Drums: Jeremy Gustin
Guitar: Will Graefe
Bass: Ryan Dugre
Trumpet: Alex Toth
Walled In:
Sax, voice: Brenden Norwood
Drums, whistling: Jeremy Gustin
Lead guitar: Delicate Steve (Steve Marion)
Rhythm guitar: Ryan Dugre
Bass: Ryan Dugre
Really Catchy Song:
Sax, voice, rhythm guitar: Brenden Norwood
Drums, piano: Jeremy Gustin
Lead guitar: Delicate Steve (Steve Marion)
Bass: Ryan Dugre
Closer:
Ukulele, voice, melodica: Brenden Norwood
Drums: Jeremy Gustin
Guitar: Delicate Steve, Will Graefe
Bass: Ryan Dugre
Trumpet: Alex Toth
Dreamtracer:
Piano, voice, melodica: Brenden Norwood
Drums, oboe: Jeremy Gustin
26-year-old Marine veteran, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter based out of the northeast. A goof/odd ball that enjoys writing unconventional indie pop
supported by 37 fans who also own “Miss The Point EP”
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