“...Bright Brown bring an ideal soundtrack to the crisp, autumn air. ...Sounds range from sparse and repetitive like a piece for avant-garde dance to expansive and melodic like the theme from a western where everyone dies in the same pool of blood. ”
— -The Deli NYC
Photo by Manish Gosola
Bright Brown
Alex Nahas loves limits. That may seem odd coming from a multi-instrumentalist who plays the Chapman Stick and harbors a deep affinity for the likes of Peter Gabriel and Talk Talk, but Nahas’s solo project Bright Brown is a case study in how to wring more from less. As Bright Brown has evolved over the course of three LPs, multiple EPs, a string of stripped-down singles written / recorded over the course of 2020 and collected into an illustrated lyric book/digital album, and most recently, the release of "Where The Ocean Once Was", an LP recorded in an isolated part of The Mojave Desert, Nahas has carved out a niche that slots into the same lineage as David Byrne, David Bowie, Daniel Lanois and Elvis Costello: all one-of-a-kind artists who shoehorned unorthodox (even extravagantly strange) approaches into highly digestible pop music.
Likewise, Nahas’s music evades categorization under the awning of any one single genre, but there’s the unmistakable common thread of a seasoned songwriter with a flair for mood, texture and atmosphere. And the more he integrates his experimental proclivities in the service of songcraft, the more Nahas highlights the peculiar edges that make his style so distinct. Those edges are there if you look closely enough, but they never demand your attention—and, crucially, they never get in the way once you spot them. Thoughtful and reflective with a knack for rendering outside-world concerns in the landscape of the personal, Bright Brown continues to venture into new frontiers, casting the Stick in a fresh light as a songwriter’s instrument with each successive song.
“...comes at you with dark heart and plea...Nahas' voice is heartbreaking and hopeful at the same time, the music layering over and under like sweet and sorrow...lose yourself in the world of the songs and learn something about where inner and outer landscapes meet.”
— Arielle Guy, Tunrtable and Blue Light
“...brilliant songs, full of pathos and alienation, but sweetened with strong doses of optimism..this music often broods along with us, but Bright Brown never fails to counter our collective agita with healthy doses of climactic major chords and high-arcing vocal choruses. Here are echoes of Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake, but with much more urgency. ”
— Greg Howard, Stick.com