Off Center, the new full-length album from Austin’s Large Brush Collection, is a record which blurs the distinction between memories and dreams in an attempt to map the ever-deepening complexities of family and friendship. Single ‘Tell Me Again’ offered “a picture of a child-parent relationship painted in all of its conflicted complexity,” as we described in a preview, “where failed expectations and the baggage of the past is counterbalanced by a persistent love, leading a cycle of friction exhausting for all involved.” Following single ‘Better Be’ was no less willing to delve into personal relationships. “Defiant in tone but tender too,” as we put it, “standing its ground without burning a bridge.” Songs which present life as it is lived, where the past exists as layers over the present and our wishes for the future come to colour everything.
‘It’s Only a Matter of Time’ is the perfect example of the style. A track lead Nora Predey wrote after revisiting the home of a childhood friend years down the line. “Someone else lived there now, but was thankfully not home,” Predey explains. “Therefore I could snoop. I took the opportunity to walk into the backyard to the water and the loneliness of memory overcame me. My memory of the way it was visually superimposed itself on every contrast, clashing with the unpeopled space of the present.” Brought to life with a subtle yet intricate folk rock sound, the result is something dreamlike yet somehow more real for it. As though the truth of experience lies not within the plain state of any given moment but what exists beyond it. Be that the long chains of memories both traumatic and fond, or wishes for what might come next.
on the floor helpless
an arrested state
out of phase, off center
out of reach and turned away
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The coexistence of so many conflicting emotions is central to the Large Brush Collection sound, and that they maintain such a delicate and complicated manoeuvre across Off Center is a testament to the sincerity with which it was written. ‘Arm’s Length’ “ebbs and flows between dreamy and anxious,” we wrote previously, “floating along sedately before rupturing with stabs of stormy guitar and clattering percussion.” The effect is to reduce the distance between the telling and the emotional experience itself, as if Predey doesn’t so much contemplate life from a remove but pull the listener right into its trenches. “I always wanted to be somebody / Who could treat their life like a game,” as she sings on opener ‘To Be Somebody’, “but I can’t.”
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Off Center is out now and available from the Large Brush Collection Bandcamp page.