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The opening track of Barry Brusseau’s So Intense Is The World, a song called “Halloween,” begins with two guitar notes thumping back and forth, even and met with a dissonant rush, then back into evenness. In comes Brusseau’s low voice, a violin sweeping behind as Brusseau keeps unfolding the line, “This is you on Halloween.”
To imagine Brusseau’s voice, think Mark Lanegan, post-Screaming Trees as his voice caramelized, or how Bill Callahan’s delivery sits somewhere between singing and reading aloud. If you don’t know those artists, think of this: plush carpet under your feet, surrounded by wood-paneled walls—the way sound feels soft and round in this room.
There is a genuine feeling, one so warm and unassuming, that lives in Brusseau’s songs. The new album, which comes out Nov. 14, is not a debut. Brusseau has lived in Portland for nearly 40 years playing in thrash metal and punk bands, and building his solo folk project. His day job for over three decades has been as a delivery truck driver for US Foods.
Brusseau came to Portland in 1983 via Longview, Wash., fresh from high school in need of work. “I figured if I could get a regular job to earn my keep and then do music, that would be good,” he says.
He stuck up flyers around town looking for bandmates and landed in a thrash metal band called Protest, then The Jimmies with his brothers, a more pop-forward Ramones-y group that lasted 15 years (the band just did a reunion show earlier this year). By the early 2000s, Brusseau found he’d accumulated a handful of “softer” solo songs but had “zero confidence in my vocal ability and was terrified to sing,” he says. “There’s a lot more to hide behind when you’re playing loud music—all of the sudden it’s just you backing up you; it was really terrifying.”
He workshopped at open mics at White Eagle and eventually, in 2009, released a debut solo record, A Night Goes Through, followed by two more records in the 2010s. He has his own analog studio, Chapel Recordings, in Milwaukie. There he does Dead Mono Sessions, where he uses a single mic to record artists on one track, then cuts roughly 25 vinyl copies. He cuts them himself through his side business, Gorbie Lathe Cuts. (“And here I am still driving the truck, but anyway,” he laughs.)
So Intense Is The World, recorded in Brusseau’s studio, has a quiet intimacy—low bass-y guitar lines, bare-bones percussive beats, soft bells. But a bit of the closeness comes from Brusseau’s voice, which often feels like the anchor of these songs. The album’s final track, “The Lord Will Leave Us,” arguably one of the fullest arrangements, was written entirely in Brusseau’s head as he was driving the truck.
“One of the great things about being a laborer—I’m laboring, whether it be in the back of the truck or the cab, but I can leave that place and work on a song, an idea, I do it all the time,” he says.
The lyrics are often simple, but come from a “real big emotional place.” “Halloween” loops just a few words, but the sentiment of the song is inspired by a memory of Brusseau’s mother taking him and his brothers to see Halloween in a full theater in 1978, right as his family was falling apart. “There was such a unity, I could feel my family, everybody scooting a little closer to each other—it’s stuck with me to this day,” he says.
The album itself is an ode to deep subtle feelings, the world’s intensity. “Maybe the first thought people might have is our political climate, how much hatred there can be—it’s not necessarily that,” he says. “I’m talking about stepping out in your backyard and seeing a caterpillar, or looking into a horse’s eyes—to me that’s intense. Or a 200-year-old tree—it had to be this spot, never had a chance to run. It’s somehow here, surviving.” (The tree makes an appearance on the track “November Man.”)
The release show at Alberta Street Pub on Nov. 14 will include two bonuses: Brusseau’s extended chapbook that tells the story behind “Halloween” and an additional album, Airline Companion, made of songs recorded in between recording So Intense Is The World.
In his press materials, Brusseau notes there will be no world tour, no television debut, no massive label support. And while nothing’s ever out of the question, those things aren’t the intent here—these songs are humble offerings, observations, sometimes from the truck, often full of gratitude. Listener, these are slow burners.
SEE IT: Barry Brusseau’s So Intense Is The World release show at Alberta Street Pub, 1036 NE Alberta St., 503-284-7665, albertastreetpub.com. 8 pm Thursday, Nov. 14. $10.