Over the past few months, we’ve previewed a number of singles from Brushfire, the latest album from Los Angeles-based musician G. Brenner on Very Jazzed. Centred on the wildfire reference in the name, the title track introduced the apocalyptic themes of the record with genuine urgency. A gentle hymn which grew desperate and disorientating, a dispatch from the frontlines of climate collapse. The song was marked by “the peculiar sadness of a present so immediate it prevents us from envisioning a future,” we wrote in the preview. “A grief so strong it registers even as the flames rise and the air turns to soot.”
But within the sublime climax of the single, another dimension showed its face. Because when the end of the world is so intrinsically linked to the greed and violence of the world itself, the process is far from simple. The terror of the destruction is balanced by other forces. Not only a wry sense of justice, but a sense of possibility, an opportunity to start anew. The razing power of fire making space for new ways of living to take hold.
Brushfire emerges from within this spirit, though is far from one-dimensional in its focus. Rather, G. Brenner weaves the various threads of his life into the fabric of the record, from the loss of his mother (captured on ‘Moon Landing’) to themes of identity, queer kinship and gender fluidity explored on the likes of ‘Dee Dee’. These personal themes are interconnected just as in the lived experience, and when charted against the huge weight the various global disasters and struggles, lend a nuanced human spirit to something that can otherwise be so huge as to be rendered simplistic.
As with much of G. Brenner’s work (including that as Pastel), a large proportion of these themes are rooted in trauma. Short- and long-term. The grief, the panic, the shock. The long mourning of life as it could have been lived, if only things were different. But for all of the anxiety and sadness, Brushfire is not a fatalistic record. It’s too rooted in the experience for that. As though pessimism is a form of self-indulgence. Doom just another luxury of those with time to sit and think, or with something material to lose. These are songs view what is coming with trepidation, yes, but with some persistent hope that there is some better place beyond. “Over my head / I hear music in the air,” goes closing track ‘Spirit’, “there must be a God somewhere.”
We had the opportunity to ask Brenner a few questions about the record, and dig a little deeper into the themes which underpin it. Read on below for an insight into making connections, flaming McMansions and the enduring tendency to persist.
Hi Gabriel, thanks so much for speaking with us. How does it feel to be so close to releasing Brushfire into the world?
Hello! Thank *you* for speaking with me <3 I think the feeling I harbor the most right now is relief. I’ve sat on this record for so long, about 3 years, and it really felt like I still had to hold all the anxiety and grief and fear and exhaustion that went into the album through the release rollout. To release the album into the world is in some ways to pass all of those ideas and feelings onto someone else (should they decide to listen). They are no longer just mine to hold onto because they become stories for other people to parse through and live in and make meaning out of. In that way, I feel a sense of relief because I don’t really have to live in my head with all of it so much anymore. I’m excited to see the response to a longer work of mine, too. As Pastel, I only ever released short EPs, so I really wanted to make a thorough artistic statement and not just a pocket sized release.
To say this is an ambitious album is something of an understatement, the themes ranging from colonialism and climate disaster to meditations on identity and the queer experience. Did it prove difficult to layer such profound topics into the songs? Or are they so intrinsic to one another that such delineations are moot?
I think figuring out the language around each idea individually was the difficult part. My overall modality of writing changed in the process of this album, from very inward-delving to a much more outward gaze – towards the world instead of away from it. I had to craft a new artistic language for myself to compensate for the shift in ideas and interest. I still found that the most potent way to generate that new language was to start from a personal place and then branch outward away from myself, so perhaps my writing style became more about the process of that shift in perspective and less the result of it, if that makes sense.
I found myself letting small bits of lyrics or outlines for ideas sit for quite a while before I tried to flesh them out. I knew a lot of the ideas felt a little disparate on paper, but I knew their connections were intrinsic, so I let time work its magic and reveal the connections between them. This gave a lot of space for inspiration to trickle in from the periphery, too. As time went on, each idea just became more and more multifaceted, and their circles of reach stretched wider and wider, to the point that the seemingly disparate lyrical ideas started to overlap naturally.
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Apocalyptic imagery is prominent across the record, though it is more complicated than plain old anxiety and dread. Tracks like ‘Mudslide’ introduce a conflicted state, and it soon becomes apparent this feeling is stitched into the very fabric of the album. Because while such destruction is violent and terrible, it also suggests new possibilities. Some sublime beauty in the violence. As though total collapse might be the only way to conquer the hegemonic forces that be. Could you speak a little on the balance between terror and awe on the record?
It’s very much a consequence of living in California and being subjected to constant wildfires. Total collapse often feels right around the corner, and in some ways you almost cannot avoid the awe of being confronted with your own precarity so often. There was a long period of time in the process of this album where I was essentially unemployed, and so I spent a lot of that time watching local news. Most of the news stories during that period were live coverage of massive, destructive wildfires. As is often the case, many of them took place in the hilly areas of southern California, where a lot of wealth is concentrated. I would constantly consume images of these massive houses burning down, likely million to multi-million dollar homes. On one hand, it was hard to deny an impending sense of doom, because those hills weren’t too far from where I lived. The chances of the flames moving down the hills and into the flat suburban area I called home at the time were slim, but the chance was still there.
On the other hand, it was like watching symbols of all that is antithetical to my being be destroyed in real time. All that wealth, whiteness, heteronormativity, quite literally looming over the rest of the city from up on the hills – poof! Gone. Direct action from Mother Nature herself. I don’t think total environmental collapse is a valid way to conquer hegemonic forces by any stretch, because almost universally it will affect marginalized peoples the worst. But when it’s a McMansion burning down in the hills… Let’s just say it doesn’t stir the same terror in me that it would if it happened to someone else.
Following the thought further, how would you judge the outlook of the songs? I can’t help but find some persistent spirit. Not hope exactly, or anything like a certain future, but some chink in the encroaching doom. Is this a shred of optimism shining? Or just a fatalistic thrill in the chaos?
I would definitely call it hope myself! I think it’s hard to call it hope when the future perhaps seems terrifyingly more certain as each day passes (shoutout to the recent IPCC report), but it’s defeatist to be so fatalistic, even though I do have to fight that tendency towards fatalism in myself.
I think dealing with the grief of my mother’s passing really put a lot of things into perspective. It quite literally felt like my world was falling apart on a personal level when she passed. My mother was supporting me big time while I was finding my footing after graduating from art school. Finding a job after it ended was immensely difficult, so she let me stay with her until I figured everything out. I ended up working part-time for minimum wage at Target for almost a year, and I had just gone back to school to start pursuing music more seriously, as I have very minimal and sporadic formal training. It was very tough, but I really started to feel like I was finding some sort of passionate path forward with the classical voice program I was in. When she passed away, all that went by the wayside. I had to abandon music school and get a Real Adult Job and grieve with the little time I had to myself. It wasn’t the path forward I was anticipating, but it was ultimately forward. Thankfully I was able to find the time, energy, and desire to funnel that grief into music-making.
I guess this is a long-winded, personal way of saying that it’s impossible to truly anticipate what may come next. If total collapse is what ends up happening, it is not an end, for better or for worse. Forward continues to happen, and I am certain that we will find ways to resist what seems ever-more certain and persist.
There’s a strong visual element to Brushfire, from the accompanying artwork to a series of striking videos released in the build-up to the album. How important is this side of the work? And how did the collaborations for the videos come about?
The visual side of my releases are always super important to me. My first love was visual art, so I always strive to present a holistic work where the audio and visual portions are very much in conversation and lend to each other’s meanings. A lot of people also refer to my music as cinematic, to the point where my label and I have played with calling my music “cinepop,” so it only feels right to have a visual side that’s equally as illustrative as the music.
Amara Higuera, my visual collaborator for this album, is a very good friend of mine. We were roommates for 2 years in undergrad, so we’re very familiar with each other’s visual styles. When it came time to work on visuals, I knew she was who I wanted to work with. She also told me that she wanted to make music videos with me since the moment we met, which was really touching. The collaboration process felt very natural. It often felt like she’d finish my visual sentences before I even had the words to communicate them. She knows me better than I know myself, visually and otherwise, and I don’t think the visuals would have been right had I worked with anyone else.
Finally, it’s a record of many emotions, with tracks like ‘Moon Landing’ and ‘Dee Dee’ capturing a marbled blend of fear and joy and mourning and love and lots of other things too. Does any of one feeling rise to the top when you think of the album now it’s complete and finished? What do you think is going to be your lasting impression of Brushfire?
On a personal level, no single feeling rises to the top just yet. I think I’ll have to get a little more distance from the rollout process and see how people respond to the music for a bit before that happens. The one thing that has stayed in my mind through this whole process though is the extent to which my music can have an effect on people. A lot of people I’ve shown the album have said it brought them to tears or moved them in a way they hadn’t been moved before, which is both an immense honor and a lot of pressure for the work I make in the future. If I do have the ability to deeply influence someone’s inner world, it’s something I’ll have to really foster and nurture and ensure it’s influencing the people that listen to my music in a way that’s ultimately positive for them. It’s one of the worries I did have about this album. There is so much (warranted) dread throughout, but I am optimistic that the little embers of hope that pop up along the way are just as impactful as all the tougher emotions.
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Brushfire is out now via Very Jazzed and available from the G. Brenner Bandcamp page.
Photos by Amara Higuera