BRENT ii

Now I don’t know if it’s just me that does this, so please let me know if I’m just a massive narcissist; but now and then I’ll search my name on Spotify, just to see what comes up. Usually to pretend I'm the main character for a little while. Anyway, this is how I came upon Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler’s new album brent ii. They are two artists, I’ve admired for a long time but manage to always slip under my radar. Jeremy Zucker is probably best known for his song ‘all the kids are depressed’ featured on his 2018 EP glisten; and Chelsea Cutler's most known song apart from those with Zucker, is her single with the Band CAMINO, ‘Crying over you’ released in 2018. Although her debut album How to be human, peaked at 23 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Earlier last year the two collaborated on their project brent (i) featuring the song ‘You were good to me’, which is their most popular song to date. However, this follow up album is conceptually more cohesive than the previous. With brent ii being the softer sounding of the two, it has been my go-to album over the past couple of weeks when going on walks.

The middle tracks, ‘emily’ and ‘brooklyn boy’ are my favourite out of both albums. So, we’ll start with ‘emily’, which serves as a sequel to the song 'please' on brent’s predecessor - This acoustic ballad is an anti-love song about a dysfunctional relationship, the characters they have created for this album confess he’ll still care ‘in spite of it all, you’re still my everything’. Instead of trying to work through things the character is asking permission, ‘In Paris, you asked me if I was afraid that we’d fall out of love. Would that be okay?’. It’s a song in which the harmonies of Zucker and Cutler play on embodying these characters, who are working through a mutual understanding of the relationship’s demise. Knowing it is time to end things, is such a bittersweet concept. This feeling really encapsulated the album: of having a loving distance from things.

Jeremy Zucker’s solo song, ‘brooklyn boy’ is a sombre piano ballad. The repetition of the same four piano chords with only slight variation in pace and structure once it reaches the chorus, emphasises that ‘This is as simple as it gets, Not pressed for time’ replicating the feeling of being stuck in a hole ‘I haven’t left my house in months’ and a continuous loop unable to break the monotony of knowing how every day for the foreseeable is going to be.

It’s not until we get to the last chorus and outro that the tone briefly takes a darker, electronic shine before turning back to the monotony. The Line ‘When it gets painful, I'll take all I can endure. Fuck are we fighting for? The year's already gone’ expresses how Zucker’s character knows no amount of feeling sorry for himself is going to do anything, so he puts his energy into his significant other, his reliance and willingness to try and take her pain away even though he is struggling to manage his own.

When speaking with Apple Music about the album Zucker said:

This is definitely a quarantine-pandemic song. A lot of the song is me building up this fantasy in my head of how I envision my life to be, and feeling frustrated that I can’t be that…I can’t even go outside. Also, in the first post-chorus, there’s a voice that says, ‘Do you think the stars wish on us?’ That’s my really good friend Lauren [who records under the name Lo Nightly]. I was feeling that way one night, and she texted me that question. I was like, ‘That’s the corniest but sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.’ I asked her to record a voice memo and send it to me, and it made it into the song.

This leads us perfectly into the next and final track on the album, ‘the stars’, which is Chelsea Cutler's solo song. The simple arrangement lends itself to the reluctance that this song possesses to being alone, which leaves detrimental room for overthinking. The first verse, ‘I don't know where you start or where I end [...] I don't know how to sleep in a cold bed’, leaves you wondering whether this is a relationship that has already ended, of if this is a companion to ‘brooklyn boy’, about the pandemic life, being stuck in a different place and having to get used to doing things differently. This track feels like she is tricking herself into believing that ‘Maybe I want your love forever, is that so bad to say? Maybe we're meant to be together if God had his way’. Through the repetition and presupposition of maybe, she may be insecure in confessing these feelings, that she might jinx the relationship that is reflected in ‘emily’.

The opening track of the album, ‘this is how you fall in love’, describes two characters who appear to be in the honeymoon phase, ‘This is how you fall in love. Let go and I'll hold you up’. I like how they play on the literal of falling and reverse the common connotations of catching someone. Instead adding the loving touch of holding them up, to not depend on each other but support them.

The song establishes an atmosphere of isolation within an idyllic setting, ‘We'll turn off the phones to just be alone. We'll draw the curtains and never leave home’. Unlike ‘brooklyn boy’, this isolation is a choice and a relief for these characters, to spend time together alone. It has been talked about, that the inspiration was drawn from the cabin where Zucker and Cutler recorded brent (i) in 2019.

The line ‘I had a nightmare (Oh) But now that I'm not scared’ is said to be a reference to the song 'Scared' from brent (i). Both songs discuss the method of dreaming as a tool to reflect their anxieties about the relationship, however, in this song, it is used to overshadow those with waking dreams of the future ‘You'll be my best friend until we grow old’. In ‘Scared’ this idea is followed into the chorus ‘don’t be scared I’m right here’ which is a nice precursor to ‘this is how you fall in love’s extension of the line ‘So pull me tight and close your eyes. Oh, my love, side to side’ emphasising the idea of being there for each other whilst not being dependent.

The line ‘“What's easy is right," my mother's advice You are the reason I never think twice’, shows the respect Cutler's character has for their mother and is another reference to the next track ‘parent song’. You can hear Cutler leading into the song with the bridge of ‘this is how I fall in love’, however, in a recent Livestream they revealed that ‘parent song’ was in fact written first and ‘this is how you fall in love’ was written around that song. It’s a nice break from the other narrative in the album.

With apple music, the two described the process of writing ‘parent song’:

Cutler: This song is really just about the ways that our relationships with our parents change. I know the last two or three years for me, being fortunate enough to start a career early and gain a little bit more independence early on has created a really interesting shift in the dynamic of my own relationship with my parents.

Zucker: You’re an adult, and a lot of times your parents don’t really see you as an adult. You’re struggling to express how much it doesn’t mean that you love your parents any less, but that you don’t want to spend every second with them.

‘parent song’ discusses the reliance we still have on our parents even in adulthood, and the frustrations of balancing time to see them when not living at home: ‘So you might have to see me less. But it's nice to have somebody to miss’, as it tries to assure that the lack of time and attention for them is not personal and that ‘I'm still the same kid I've always been [...] I still need you like I always did’. The idea of being on a mate’s holiday or Zucker and Cutler's case touring, having so much fun you forget to keep in touch. ‘You keep calling just to say you miss me. Never know what I'm supposed to say’ Many an awkward phone call where you can tell them what you’ve been up to or what you’re feeling and all you have left to say is ‘missing you too’. But no matter how bad you’re feeling, a trip back home always lifts your spirits ‘Summer wasn't easy to enjoy. Don't think I can make it to November. I just really need to hear your voice’. This is such a wholesome song, if you aren’t at home or missing your parents, send this song to them and I think it will definitely go appreciated.

There has been many a hot topic come and go in music, claiming the death of the music genre, the mixtape, and of the album. I think none of this is true; particularly the death of the album. The past year has brought out some of the most thoroughly thought out and well-crafted music I’ve heard, in particular, how poetic concept albums like Folklore and Evermore by Taylor Swift, Kid Krow by Conan Gray, and transformative genre-crossing creations like SAWAYAMA by Rina Sawayama and Zeros by Declan Mckenna.

Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler have a knack for looking at the bigger picture when constructing an album. The way they lead into songs and blend them into one another, really emphasises how a cohesive piece of art, like an album, is capable of bringing you as a listener into another aspect of listening. I am a prolific shuffler; however, it is more than just satisfying to listen to this album in full, and in order, you are immersed in this experience.