Broken Lights in the Soundscape of Brookville

Andy Chase Maps Out a New Musical Locality

Sep 7, 2009

Andy Chase of Ivy has come out with his third Brookville CD. Some of his strongest songs to date shine a light on the complexities of broken relationships.

If one didn’t know who Andy Chase was, the first question that might arise on listening to his music is: "Where the hell is Brookville?" Its sounds like the name of a small town or suburb anywhere in the eastern U.S. or the Midwest. And in fact, there are towns and villages called "Brookville" in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and, significantly, around Bethesda, Maryland where Chase grew up.

To date, Chase is probably best known as a member of the band Ivy, like the L.A.-based Dengue Fever, a U.S. band with a foreign-born singer, in this case French singer, Dominique Durand. Those in the music business might know him as co-owner of the Unfiltered record label; the producer of artists Juliana Hatfield, Trashcan Sinatras and Tahiti 80; owner of Stratosphere Sound recording studio along with James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins) and Adam Schlesinger (Ivy, Fountains of Wayne); film composer (Shallow Hal) and, of course, musician (Ivy, Paco).

Independent Label Group

Whatever the personal significance to him, "Brookville" is what Chase calls one specific music persona. The third full-length Brookville CD, Broken Lights will be released September 29 on Unfliltered Records under an agreement with Warner Music Group’s Independent Label Group. But this Brookville effort is different from the previous two, Wonderfully Nothing (2003) and Life in the Shade (2006). So different, in fact, Chase reportedly considered releasing it under another name.

The feel of Broken Lights is of personal, almost intimate, melancholy. Beginning with the heavily ironic Happy, each cut seems to take a slightly different slant on broken relationships. The song lyrics are not of the standard "broke-my-heart-when-you-said-goodbye" variety. They are thoughtful expressions of complex emotions. In Great Mistake, for example, the singer tells his lover: "If you really love me, you will let me make/ the great mistake of leaving you."

Itunes Genre

The songs are full of this kind of ambivalence that is so often a part of real life romances. In Goodbye Chase sings: "Another dream was going off to die/ yet all I felt was relief when she said, ‘Goodbye/ I don’t love you anymore.’" Not only are the lyrics refreshingly honest and intelligent, so is the music. How to categorize the music? iTunes describes the genre as "unclassifiable."

That might be a bit off-putting to some, but the music isn’t experimental in the sense of being modal or atonal or electronic. Rather, like the lyrics, it is subtle and complex in its layering and tonality and often offers bright melodic counterpoint to the darker lyrics. Chase’s voice is very much upfront with virtually no backup vocals, which is part of the intimate quality. Listening to Broken Lights, the feeling is confessional, but not maudlin or sentimental.

Chase said that one of the themes he was working with was losing not only love, but control of one’s life and trying to regain control. Turning over the production to his friend Pedro Resende of Tahiti 80 may have helped enhance communicating the feeling of loss of control.

Broken Lights is a work of whole cloth with no filler or off-the-cuff tracks that gets better with every listening. Each track supports and is supported by all the others. Chase seems to have tapped a rich vein of songwriting that should help him get a wider audience.

The copyright of the article Broken Lights in the Soundscape of Brookville in Indie Rock Music is owned by Michael Waterson. Permission to republish Broken Lights in the Soundscape of Brookville in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.