building brooklyn - from the bottom of the bay

Building Brooklyn 

From The Bottom Of The Bay
self-released; 2014

3.4 out of 5

By Ted Rogen

Building Brooklyn is a one-man project from New Hampshire who writes a lot of music. For his debut album he had 365 songs, which means he wrote one song a day for a year. He somehow narrowed it down to twelve songs, which made up his debut album entitled One Year. After a year he is back with his second release entitled From The Bottom of the Bay. The songs on this seven-song album are composed of just vocals and an acoustic guitar. The songwriting is very good throughout both lyrically and musically. With that being said there is no variation to the music in terms of instrumentation, which makes a straight listen difficult. The addition of piano, drums, bass or anything else would have helped with my attention span. 

The artist is a talented lyricist and has a pleasant voice. He sometimes sounds like Colin Meloy from The Decemberists. This is most evident of the track on “Weather Glass.”

The album starts with “Harder to Find,” which is an upbeat folk song that displays his talent for songwriting. It has momentum and purpose as he confidently sings about sitting in traffic jams, setting up roadblocks and sirens. His lyrics are poetic metaphors and puns that stray from a narrative and instead are circular passages, which make you think. “Weathered Glass” is full of warm melancholy and revolves around guitar picking while “That Day In November” delivers an infectious vocal melody on the album. 

“Waiting” was the highlight of the album but was also a bit of a head scratcher. The song starts with him saying “chill the fuck out,” which sounds out of place against the pretty guitar riff he begins to play. Once the song gets going you are treated with a great guitar progression and a fantastic vocal melody. The song is immediately enjoyable and was the one on the album I had on repeat. 

From the Bottom of the Bay is a solid album with some good material that might have been better with more instrumentation. Check it out. 

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