After time spent playing pedal steel and organ for Americana duo The War & Treaty, Bronchtein stepped away in 2019 to focus on his own work. The pandemic hit soon after, and in the absence of touring he got to work on new material in his home studio that will form a new record, to be released in the coming months.

For now, we have new single ‘Middle of the Road’ to suggest the direction of the forthcoming album. Written in collaboration with Caitlin Canty, the song was performed in Nashville by a full band including Cy Winstanley, Sam Howard, Nate Barnes, and Rachel Baiman, with engineering form Sean Sullivan and mixing by Tyler Fortier. The result is as full-bodied as the line-up suggests, a rich and decidedly anthemic song anchored by Bronchtein’s distinctively evocative delivery. A track which finds a steady confidence as it develops, assured in its own pace and frame of mind.

Between two lines In the middle of the road
Can’t pass me by In the middle of the road
Gonna take my time In the middle of the road

Rock in my tire keeping time
Strobing light between the pines
My heartbeat finds the rhythm

All my friends are taking sides
Picking fights drawing lines
I ain’t going with them

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Now Philippe Bronchtein is back with a new EP, Oregon Air. Joined by The War and Treaty’s Max Brown on bass and Sam Wilson on guitar, as well as Josh McCewn on drums, the record is what Bronchtein calls a collection of “road-worn songs penned in the back of vans, airport gates, hotel rooms, and unfamiliar kitchen tables.” The result is as wistful as that sounds, Bronchtein following a long line of artists who have considered what is, what was, and what might’ve been.

The title track is rich with a grand sense of heart-warming nostalgia, McCewn’s percussion lending a sense of hope and positivity to a song about old friends, passing time and thoughts of belonging. Juxtaposing his childhood New Jersey with his adopted Portland, Oregon, Bronchtein allows memories to bleed into current images to weave a tapestry that explores just what we mean by home. As usual, Bronchtein’s songwriting is very strong, maintaining his unique voice while drawing from decades of folk and country traditions. “The moon bounced off the water,” he sings in a line that’s indicative of his easy lyricism, “like a ball against the ground.”

In the middle of winter, we were experiencing some uncharacteristically heavy rainfall. The river was well above its banks and moving very quickly. I drew inspiration from the swollen river to write a meditation about gracefully moving on.

These themes are knit tight into Oregon Air, as reflective and stirringly hopeful a release as Bronchtein has ever made. The EP is out now and you can get it from the Philippe Bronchtein webstore.

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Tracklisting:

Restorations – Nonbeliever
Goshen Electric Co. – The Grey Tower
Horse Culture – Follow
Yowler – Where Is My Light?
Desert Liminal – Gauze Cave
Anamon – In 3
Adeline Hotel – Lightning
Lea Thomas – Upstream
Scott Orr – No Phone
Advance Base – Christmas in Nightmare City
Blue Wilson – Golden Eyes
The Sofas – Nothing Major
Lazy Legs – Nosebleed
All Boy/All Girl – Bomb
Strange Ranger – New Hair
Elly Swope – Idea
Dweller – Running
Will Henriksen – Halo
Knuckle Pups – Bottom Baby
Ian Wayne – Guessing
Massage – Crying Out Loud
Recluse Raccoon – Mother America
Interbellum – Ink
Marc Ferrino – Like a Spark
Katie Kuffel – As the Crow Flies
Emily Brown – Sometimes
KASHKA – Holding Steady
Philippe Bronchtein – Me and the Moon
Spencer Segelov – Sacred Songs
Annie Dressner – Fades Away
Belaver – Grave Robber
Of The Valley – Ride Alone
Hour – Give thanks in a special way

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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”

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”

Me and the Moon is out now and you can buy it from the Philippe Bronchtein webstore.

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