Early in 2024, Austin-based folk rock outfit Large Brush Collection will release their debut full-length album Off Center. Led by songwriter and bassist Nora Predey and featuring Gabriela Torres (flute), Dan Magorrian (guitar) and Rishi Bajekal (drums), the band combine intuitive rhythms with intricate detail to conjure soundscapes able to explore the most personal of things. Take lead single ‘Tell Me Again‘, “a picture of a child-parent relationship painted in all of its conflicted complexity,” as we described, “where failed expectations and the baggage of the past is counterbalanced by a persistent love, leading a cycle of friction exhausting for all involved.”
But Predey broached the subject with real nuance, ensuring to be both honest and empathetic in her assessment, and the resulting track weaved love and pain into something as graceful as it was convinced. The style carries through into latest single ‘Better Be’, a song no less willing to delve into the thorny depths of family. It’s defiant in tone but tender too, standing its ground without burning a bridge.
“‘Better Be’ is a song about being in a conflict that has no end in sight, where you have all these expectations for what resolution might look like, but no real way to get there,” Predey told Paste Magazine. “I was dealing with some complicated family stuff when I wrote it and was being really disrespected, but I was so indignant about it all that the feeling of disrespect sort of looped around to empowerment. Sometimes, you just need to dig your heels in.”
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Off Center is out in January 2024 and you can pre-order it now.
