Though Me and the Moon is the first album released by Philippe Bronchtein under his own name, the voice might well be familiar to fans of folk and country rock. Recording and touring under the moniker Hip Hatchet, Bronchtein carved out his own place within the contemporary folk scene, his distinctive vocals and unerring ability to write poignant, evocative vignettes placing him amongst the finest in the genre.
The choice to adopt his own name for his new record is a product of the maturation and evolution that every artist, especially those that start young, naturally work through. Hip Hatchet was plucked haphazardly from a novel by a nineteen-year-old Bronchtein, and after a decade the name began to feel less and less meaningful. “As I got older and more comfortable in my own skin,” Bronchtein explains, “the moniker felt like something I was hiding behind rather than embracing. It feels more honest to continue putting out music under my own name than trying to conform to some image of what an American songwriter should be.”
Which is to say, the arbitrary Hip Hatchet began to feel like something of a folk trope, an attempt to fit within the Americana genre that became an empty facsimile. For some, a band name is just a band name, but for an artist who plies his trade with a sense of sincerity and authenticity, the false meaning of Hip Hatchet just wouldn’t do. The solution was easy—how better to reclaim a sense of authenticity than using one’s own name? “The name contains multitudes,” Bronchtein says. “My first name is from my mother’s Quebecois (French-Canadian) side. My last name is from my father’s side, of Russian Jewish Heritage.” Philippe Bronchtein is a history.
Which is to say, Me and the Moon signals not some drastic change of direction, but rather a full embrace of the styles and nuances that make Bronchtein’s music his own. The themes of travel and longing and the distance of home were always Hip Hatchet staples, and again this record is centred on the compulsion to move and the fear and loneliness that might follow. ‘It’ll Do’ and ‘Home Again’ explore the discrepancy between feelings when away and at home, Bronchtein pining for home on the road and itching to move when off it, the traditional benefits of home feeling empty, lacking their imagined importance, like wistful delusions born of too many nights driving alone.
However, there is doubt too about the value of the miles he has so far clocked, questions as to what exactly he has to show for such an endeavour. Therefore, the road he desires to get back on might be a metaphorical one, the urge to move on not necessarily a longing for the next town or tour, but a new period of life.
The entire record could be viewed as the slow realisation of this, the ubiquitous wistful tone the product of Bronchtein letting a great part of himself go, Hip Hatchet and all that came with it now separate, his identity no longer but fond memories, remembered in a dusky light. ‘Kitchen Window’ and ‘Joy of Repetition’ seem preoccupied by this, a pervasive sense of loss creeping into all things, as though the experiences are slipping through his fingers even as they are unfolding.
“I feel like a memory, one that can’t brave the fires of time and stone”
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Perhaps the most upbeat track on the record, ‘Ginger Tea and Wine’ finds Bronchtein an ocean away from home and regretting those he left behind. ‘I’m a Runner’ is similarly troubled, born of the loneliness of the rootless life, where moving forward is merely the most efficient way of not looking back. The title track too finds Bronchtein in a life difficult and rarely comfortable, and the motivation behind the constant movement begins to feel like a lie he has repeated into certainty. Though, the fact that Bronchtein is still going suggests that maybe some people are just cut out for this. For journeys with no clear end. For journeys as the end.
I’m drinking for free in a new town each night”
with my sleeves both rolled up, man this is the life.When the gasoline’s cheaper but I’m barely alive
after ten thousand miles, man this is the life.But the trees here ain’t green and a truck’s not a home.
I keep telling myself, this is the life I chose”
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Me and the Moon is out now and you can buy it from the Philippe Bronchtein webstore.
