ZapTown

Tom Brousseau
Posthumous Success
Fat Cat
Rating: 3 out of 5

A few years back, I got a hold of a copy of Empty Houses Are Lonely. I really wanted to like Tom Brousseau. I heard many great things about his persona and style that all seemed intriguing. However, after a few listens, I was not impressed at all. I wanted to be, but listening through that album made me feel like he just was not living up to his potential as Empty Houses felt, well, a little empty with middle-of-the road acoustic weavings.

Leaving Fat Cat to do Grand Forks on Loveless and Cavalier on FTC, he’s now back on Fat Cat, and even though not all songs agree with me, it’s an improvement to what Brousseau can do as a musician. Much like the Rocky Votolato syndrome where he went from the sub par Burning My Travels Clean to the inspiring Makers, Brousseau’s Posthumous Success is dark and daunting; a pop album that digs deep down into the dirt of your soul and carves out prose like scratching letters on metal.

Don’t get to ambitious just yet, the real charm of this album is when he does not utter a word. “Youth Decay” is a lonely guitar crying out in the night. You almost expect to hear something howl in the distance, but the loneliness is conveyed when the shimmering of a guitar fades away and “Drumroll” builds off of the quiet, serenading the listener like a Lou Reed impersonator.

But it’s songs like “Miss Lucy” that make this album so special in its simplistic park bench storytelling context, plucking an acoustic with shy-like vibes ringing out in the background that builds into a gorgeous spring-like pop instrumental.

And although songs like “Favorite Color Blue” and “You Don’t Know My Friends” or “Axe & Stump” is less than attractive, tantalizing the best of mundane folky pop meddling, Brousseau is not half bad these days with some standout tracks that I consistently return to.

Links:

Tom Brousseau: http://tombrosseau.com/
Fat Cat Records: http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/