Tom Brosseau
Cavalier (FatCat Records)

Cavalier, Tom Brosseau’s second LP for FatCat, is his most focused batch of songs to date. The album was recorded in Bristol, UK with PJ Harvey collaborator and producer John Parish at Toy Box studio in Bristol, UK; Parish had become a fan after seeing one of Brosseau’s spellbinding live shows. The delicacy of his production provides deft flourishes and embellishments that expand and magnify the songs while keeping the spotlight firmly on Brosseau’s voice and guitar.

While Cavalier is Brosseau’s most personal record yet- - he refers to the album as “an apocalypse of the self” - the songs retain all the humility, tenderness and beauty of his earlier work.

Brosseau fits to an extent into the current folk renaissance, but his music is devoid of posturing and oblivious to trends. Plaintive, eloquent and timeless, his songs display an innate affinity with the American blues/folk tradition, recalling the likes of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Mississippi John Hurt and beyond. His songs also clearly reference the musicality of rhythm and blues vocal groups such as The Inkspots. Limber and vibrato-tinged, Brosseau’s voice hovers between the masculine and feminine.

He sings of lost love through his tales of poetic observation, with lyricism evoking American novelists such as John Fante, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Steinbeck; correspondingly, Cavalier's album artwork is inspired by the book covers of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

Brosseau was born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota, in a music-loving family; instruments lined the walls of their house, and he was taught guitar by his grandmother at an early age. His grandfather, who had an expansive record collection, played in a string band called Buck and the Buccaneers. While attending the University of North Dakota, Brosseau played shows at local club, the Peanut Bar; after graduation, he moved to Minneapolis for a brief stint in music school, then to Nashville, then to Phoenix, then back to Minneapolis where he played regularly in St. Paul at the Artist’s Quarter. Brosseau eventually moved to San Diego by way of Salt Lake City. There he met Gregory Page, a central figure in the local music scene; Page recorded much of what would become Brosseau’s debut LP, Empty Houses Are Lonely.

Since then, Brosseau has been steadily emerging as a songwriter and performer, winning listeners with his honest, expressive performances and an almost-anachronistic simplicity and directness.

The close-mic’d recordings on Cavalier capture, more than any previous recordings, what Brosseau’s live shows convey. Brosseau is as comfortable on stage as off; he engages fully with the audience, blessing them with an intimate and emotionally immediate performance. His songs have the quality of a private conversation at the next table that you can’t keep from listening to. Put simply, Tom Brosseau is among the most naturally talented performers we have ever seen or heard.

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