Brandon Patton
Should Confusion
Merlin Pool Music

Download an MP3 of Brandon Patton's "3100 Miles"

There’s a moment in Brandon Patton’s “3100 Miles” where the verse begins to give way to the chorus -- I think songwriters, and James Brown, call this part “the bridge” – and a detached, multi-tracked voice descends on the song. Like a guardian angel bearing gifts of wisdom, it answers the nostalgic storytelling of the verses with heavenly chorus of “The brightest stars … can fade …” And then no chorus comes after all, just one punchy recitation of the song’s title phrase, and we’re off to the next verse. If you ever fancied yourself a poet, or reckoned this songwriting stuff was probably pretty easy, really, you oughta go listen to it now. There, it’s up there for download, go on and take a minute and check it out. That’s how you write a song.

Brandon Patton’s talents are so fully formed, it’s hard to imagine him toiling away at this record in obscurity and awkward eponymity. Like Ink Blot favorites Culty Smothers (neé The Weather, see our Brightest Hope, 2003), Patton has a literate but personable way with a lyric, an effortless arranger’s touch, and a knack for making you feel like you were waiting for his music to come into your life. If he lacks the beautiful voice that made Western Addition so special, he's still a fine singer and adds nifty guitar playing throughout. And Should Confusion is a wonderfully welcoming record: intimate, but not uncomfortably so; intelligent, but with no interest in distancing itself from the listener.

“Mo’s Song” weaves the mundane and the profound into inscrutable patterns, then pulls the string and unravels the whole thing in its final couplet. “Did That All Before” is a jaunty pre-rock strumalong that deconstructs relationship-building (and its inverse) with barely-contained glee and surprisingly convincing sexuality. “What’s the Worst that Could Happen?” on the other hand, is the kind of tearaway, lumpy-throated rocker Dave Grohl would shave his goatee for. And “Auspicious Moment” is the one thing no one who hears this record will ever forget, a wisecracking but honest meditation on the difficulties of paying attention in class when hormones are in bloom, voiced hilariously by accomplice Anand Nayak over a riotously messy latin house rhythm. Apparently Nayak asked his friend to hit record and then read the lyric from Patton’s journal without permission. “Remember when joy was this easy?” Patton asks in the liner notes. You will.

For fans of:
The Weather
Elliot Smith
Badly Drawn Boy
The Streets
Foo Fighters

-- Jesse Fahnestock