Minneapolis multi-instrumentalist and engineer Charlie Bruber may not be known primarily as a singer songwriter but with the release of his second solo album, Prized Burden, that is likely to change. Channelling the tenderness and poetry of giants like John Martyn and Nick Drake, Bruber –– over the course of 14 stunningly crafted mellow folk rock anthems –– reflects on loss and acceptance and memory itself. The results fit comfortably alongside the work of contemporaries like Martin Courtney and Ryley Walker, but Prized Burden is highly personal, and it belongs profoundly to Bruber.
“This record is a journal entry,” Bruber says, one that he hopes will capture the past few years of his life and the attendant emotional ecosystem. Bruber began writing the songs on Prized Burden while on his honeymoon in Northern New Mexico. The landscape can be heard in this music, largely via the sort of timeworn associations that have been baked into the place: the romantic tumble of finger picked acoustic guitar, a distantly howling horn or stray steel string, drumming like the steady advance of a freight train. But consider this: the juxtaposition of the honeymoon –– a celebration of the promise of comfort –– with the cold depths of the expansive desert nights, falling stars and unfamiliar fauna. The track 'Vai e Volta' in fact was directly inspired by a few sleepless nights marked by wild insect encounters.
“When the sun sets in the desert,” Bruber says, “we are reminded of the depths of life and a greater timeline, well beyond the human timeline. We are truly merely visitors.” Bruber’s father was put into memory care just ahead of Bruber’s marriage and honeymoon and the semination of the record. Bruber and his sister cared for their father over the next few years as he declined and eventually passed away. There is comfort in the sound of Prized Burden, something familiar and warm, something reassuring in the evident care taken, not only in the meticulous songwriting, but the perfect execution. In a sense, it sounds like a honeymoon. But the existential reeling at the center of these songs is profound, vertiginous. Bruber grapples with trauma and aging, with the loss of memory and life. The writer of these songs is a man whose father is not only dying, but forgetting, even as Bruber himself remembers, as he discovers. And the discoveries were not all pleasant. The “prized burden” here is the weight of generational trauma and the vestiges of his father’s mistakes, many of which Bruber himself was left to fix.
Charlie Bruber’s history playing on and engineering work by folks like Cole Pulice, Kevin Gastonguay, Lynn Avery and PaviElle French as well as performing, writing and producing in his own groups Charlie.Murphy, Society of Chemists and Black Market Brass have certainly informed the precision and sonic expertise here, but it is only living and listening that can help one to stitch together songs like these.
On “Complexion” he sings, gently but firmly: “There’s room to grow now / to who-knows-where, child” and it’s difficult not to hear something utterly kind in Bruber’s delivery. But there is a double-edged nature to Charlie Bruber. Ashley Commodore’s soulful and limber backing vocals interweave with and echo Bruber’s on “Sweet Friend,” when he sings: "How can I be who I am / when you think you’ve got me figured out? / A friend to you, a friend to me / so they say / Why did you stick around, my friend? / You box me in / a means to an end.” Whatever depths this song touches, it could also apply simply to Bruber’s career. Prized Burden is a bold challenge to anyone, friend or not, who may have previously boxed in Bruber in any way. Not simply an instrumentalist or engineer, Charlie Bruber can run with his contemporaries and the spirits of his heroes, those who chronicle the human experience.