BROOKE BENTHAM will be releasing her debut album Everyday Nothing on AllPoints on February 28, 2020. Brooke recently released a second single, Perform for You, a melancholy meditation on the power dynamics in toxic relationships. Inspired by novels that Brooke was reading. she probes beneath the surface of a doomed romance from the get-go.
Brooke says of Perform for You:
“It’s like surrendering to something, even though you know it’s never going to work, realising you’re so dependent on someone and knowing your presence in that relationship. it’s love in the worst way.”
“‘Perform for You’ is probably my favourite, because it reminds me of lots of the music I love. Once we’d recorded that, I knew we were making an album. Musically it was exactly where I wanted to be.”
Everyday Nothing follows two EPs of music shored up by intense reflection, which has earned the 23-year-old many admirers and a rapidly growing fanbase.
Writing sharp and eloquent songs about her experiences as she understands them, Brooke uses words and music to resolve and record the tensions of young adulthood. Confronted with the mundanities of life and caught between two jobs in London, she finds intense lyricism in the struggle for purpose and direction.
The album is, in her words,
“in part an ode to the little moments in life, the frustration of being young and unaware of what you want but getting older and realising you still don’t know. It’s an album I searched for myself in, filled with questions I asked myself.”
Written entirely by Brooke, with a few contributions from producer Bill Ryder-Jones (who’s own album Yawny Yawn was showered with 4 and 5 star reviews last year), Everyday Nothing documents a fast-rising 23-year-old looking to make sense of her existence. So impressed was Ryder-Jones with Brooke’s observational lyricism that he said:
“I’ve worked with some amazing songwriters in my career. I think Brooke at 23 is well on her way to being up there with Alex (Turner), Saint Saviour, Mick (Head) and James (Skelly). Her lyric writing will be overlooked because of her voice but it is her words that will set her apart from others.”
Perform for You follows All My Friends Are Drunk released early October which was the first taster of Everyday Nothing.
Brooke supports Sam Fender’s UK tour on at Cardiff’s Great Hall on December 13.
For three years she busked and played pubs and open-mic nights around Newcastle, often sharing a stage with her friend Fender, who stole her version of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’. He will finally repay the favour by taking Brooke on tour starting at Manchester Academy with two Brixton Academy dates.
Everyday Nothing soundtracks the reality for many young people today. One in which hopes, and dreams play out in a haze of confusion and frustration. Brooke captures this existential vulnerability, the baffling day to day-ness of a young life in the most relatable, poetic and compelling of works. “A lot of life is boring and predictable, but I hope this album is a way of saying that with some charm.”
-
Everyday Nothing comes out on February 28th on AllPoints on LP, CD and digital. Perform for You is out now.