SPURNING a promising career in acting is beginning to look like a good move for Chicago baroque-pop artist Bryan Away. With his third single, “Dreams And Circumstance”, out now, followed by an album early next month, it’s time we embraced a songsmith of great talent.
The singer-songwriter born Elliott Korte came to music relatively late; acting seemed to be his chosen creative path. He played Ted Danson’s son on the television show Damages (lining up also alongside William Hurt, John Hannah, Glenn Close et al) and had parts in a few indie films. He was studying computing at college; but, y’know, it was the music that really spoke to him. All the time he was working, very privately, on his first album, The Educated Youth; no one had heard it.
And the new single shows just what a shining talent he is; if people like Sufjan, Patrick Watson, Andy Shauf flicker your personal listening flame, then you absolutely need to gather Bryan in. “Dreams And Circumstance” has an almost West Coast psych vocal purity, complex, wending melodies, a real bliss.
We fell a little bit hard for his first single, “The Lake”, noting it as being “a dusky beauty, piano-led, graceful, the kinda song you can wrap yourself in against the depredations of the world while fully acknowledging the fragility of it all. Or, put it another way: a cracker.” (Watch the video, hear the track for yourself, here). Last month’s “Scenes From A Wedding” showed us how right we were to prick up our ears: folky, jazzy, start-stop lush.
His songcraft is full of melody but not shy of a little angularity, a little off-kilter melodic thing; you gotta hear what Bryan’s bringing.
Bryan Away’s Canyons To Sawdust will be released digitally on July 9th, and is available to pre-order right now over at Bandcamp.
Connect with Bryan at his website and on Facebook and Instagram.
