The rising Vermont band takes their sound to new heights with latest tracks “Please Kill Me” & “Man Alive”
Since forming in 2022, Vermont band Brunch have steadily expanded the boundaries of their self-described “rock” sound, moving from the quick, resourceful recording process of their early releases toward a more deliberate approach shaped by a growing palette of influences. On their new double A-side, “Please Kill Me” and “Man Alive,” the group pulls from everything from rockabilly, Madchester and shoegaze to literature and film, using memory, nostalgia and perception as connective tissue between the songs. In the conversation below, Brunch reflect on becoming more confident in the studio, trusting their instincts as collaborators, embracing genre as something fluid, and building a live show designed to leave audiences intrigued, surprised and still trying to untangle exactly what they just heard.
You’ve been playing together since forming in 2022, and you’ve now moved through Parasocial, Dogina and other live releases and these new singles. What has changed the most about the way you write and make decisions together?
I would say that when we first started recording, like the first album, I think we did it in two days. And we were all in college at the time and sort of the mindset was like, we have these songs written, we have to get them on a tape and we have to do it as quickly as possible so that we can fill out an album. We also don’t have any money. I think progressively we’ve gotten to take more and more time on each of our releases. Especially this last one, we took maybe three or four days on just two songs, whereas on our first album, you know, we did eight songs in two days. I think we have grown so much as like, not only skill wise as musicians, but also as producers and sort of understanding what we want, sort of like our art to actually sound like. Being able to be intentional with that in the studio has been sort of a revelation. Each time we record, we get a little bit better at it.
You’ve described your music as engaging with different eras of rock. While these new songs are bringing in synthesizers and sounds outside of your earlier framework, what are you interested in doing with Brunch now that you weren’t interested in doing before?
I think we weren’t necessarily interested in playing with genres the same way when we started out. I think the album has a lot of that, but more so it’s just a reflection of like, we all listen to different kinds of music and all of us are pretty much listening to and thinking about music all the time. So as we listen to more things and we’re like, wait, this is kind of cool about 1950s rockability. And this is kind of cool, like 1980s Madchester or like ’90s shoegaze. So the more we do that and we pick that apart the more we kind of add on to the mix. I think at this point, we understand how to find the balance between intellectualizing it, you know, really planning for, like, this is going to be a mesh between these sounds and these sounds versus what it’s always been, which is we make music that we want to listen to, and what we want to listen to is constantly changing. So the music that we’re making is constantly changing with it.
So the song “Please Kill Me” takes its title from the oral history of New York’s punk scene, while “Man Alive” goes somewhere more personal. What drew you to pair these two songs together as a double A side? And what do you think they reveal about brunch right now?
Well, the main reason that they’re a double A side is because we only had enough money and time to make two songs. So at base, that’s it. But at the same time the songs that we’re making are a reflection of how we’re feeling and what we’re listening to. So both these songs kind of share similar themes, say, mostly about, like, memory and nostalgia and sort of cycles. Cycles of things I’ve just been thinking about a lot. We also made these two songs in February in the Vermont winter. So it’s kind of brutal around then. Everything is white, there’s no leaves on the trees. It’s like negative 14 degrees. And I think the songs, at least in my head, are a way of splashing color onto that whiteness. I think the songs are very colorful, even though maybe if you put them in a frame, it’s icy outside of them. So I think that’s it. Other than that, I just have been. I was reading a lot around that time. I’m always reading, but I was reading a lot of James Joyce, Murakami and watching some David lynch stuff. A lot of those songs, both of those songs, are really toying with memory, perception and where we are in relation to where. I think Man Alive is a lot more personal, but at base it comes from those same emotions.
It’s very poetic. I also enjoy your use of visual language to describe your work.
Thanks. I think something that I’ve come to realize about our music is sort of what I’ve said before, which is that we just have to trust ourselves, and the music comes out of that. So thinking about the significance of any songs that we’re making at the moment, it’s like, what are we listening to? What are we feeling? And then what we’ve gotten better at is how do we translate those into a work of art and work with each other to combine elements into something like that. And so really a lot of whatever my answers are going to be are also just trying to pin down how I’m feeling and how I think my bandmates are feeling. I think that comes off in the in the music, too.
What’s one thing you want people to walk away feeling after seeing Brunch live?
I think we’ve fulfilled our potential. If people walk away thinking, like, what the hell was that? And by that, I mean, I think we’ve really sort of pinned down a unique sound that draws from so many places that it’s hard really to put a label on it, which is why we sort of tongue in cheek, just go by rock, because it feels like that’s really the only way to describe what we’re doing. We’re all such music nerds that I think pretty much every element of our music we can point to and be like, this is inspired by this artist or this song sort of, or this author. So if people walk away from a show or even just listening to the music, thinking what were these sounds? What were the strains that they’re drawing from? Who do these guys remind me of and why? And get people really thinking about how art develops and pulls from different things and how we can be a champion of that. I think leaving people thinking is really the goal.
