A spellbinding alt-country portrait of motion and disquiet, Brown Horse’s sophomore album ‘All The Right Weaknesses’ turns half-heard memories, roadside dread, and road-worn intimacy into eleven live-wire songs – growing bigger and more expressive without losing the band’s haunted sense of place, or the interior ache at its core. Heard today, the record still hums with movement and proximity, its grit, warmth, and emotional friction shaped by a band who learned that sometimes, a whole bunch of wrongs really do make a right.

Stream: “Dog Rose” – Brown Horse

Press your face up to the screen, and you can feel the static.

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Brown Horse write like they’re catching signals – half-heard memories, roadside images, the strange dread of ordinary days – and turning that interference into music you can hold.

It’s the sound of daily life carrying more weight than it lets on; of conversations left unfinished; of places passed through too quickly; of feelings you don’t fully understand until they’re already gone – a combination of quiet dread and passing beauty, caught before they disappear forever. On All The Right Weaknesses, the band’s gift widens into a bigger, bolder physical language: Yowling guitars, pedal steel that seems to speak in full sentences, and songs built to survive any room they’re thrown into. It’s the product of a band on the move, road-worn and road-tested, complicating their own mythology without losing the haunted disquiet that first drew us in.

Released April 4^th, 2025 via Loose Music, All The Right Weaknesses is Brown Horse’s spellbinding second album – a record full of grit and heart, built in motion and held together through proximity, repetition, and life lived on the road. Nearly a year on, these eleven songs continue to hum with the restless coherence of a band learning to trust its instincts, push its sound further, and let the music grow tougher and more expressive without sanding down their edges.

Comprised of Rowan Braham, Emma Tovell, Nyle Holihan, Patrick Turner, Ben Auld, and Phoebe Troup, Brown Horse formed in Norwich, UK in the early 2020s, emerging with a folk-boned, electric-leaning sound built on close harmony, textured guitars, and songs that feel lived-in rather than polished. Their core identity has always lived in the tension between intimacy and force – a band equally drawn to hushed detail and full-band heat, forever finding new ways to turn the lights down and the volume up. 2024’s acclaimed debut album Reservoir introduced them through a soul-stirring alt-country reverie that unfolded slowly and deliberately – filled with dusty guitars, gothic imagery, and hushed emotional gravity, steeped in exterior and interior unease. Atwood Magazine praised it as a “gentle giant that sneaks up on the ears,” an emotionally charged debut that engulfed the listener in cathartic, intoxicating waves of warmth and wonder, and instantly established Brown Horse as a band unafraid to sit with turbulence, tenderness, and the ache of interior life.

Discussing their first album, Rowan Braham previously told Atwood there was “a real sense of disquiet that somehow relates to landscape… a kind of haunted feel to the music.”

That mood didn’t leave on the band’s sophomore effort – it grew legs. “That mood definitely extends to this record as well,” he says of All the Right Weaknesses, “but I think there’s a greater range to this one. I’d say the songs here share a real sense of disorientation. Looking at them now, almost all of the songs are about trying to adapt in some way. In [our song] ‘Wipers,’ Emma talks about eyesight adapting to the darkness, and I think here we’re often dealing with dark or dull aspects of day to day life, but looking for ways to make something out of them. I’m gonna say that’s two, and the third one is about the size of the amps – bigger.”

That “bigger” isn’t just volume; it’s a philosophy. It’s what happens when you stop trying to protect the songs from the world and start letting the world mark them up – fifty shows deep, played in all manner of spaces, tightened and tested until the sound matches the language. “Most of the songs were written before we set out on a really extensive period of touring following Reservoir’s release,” Braham tells Atwood Magazine. “A tour of Scandinavia gave us a chance to road test the new material, and so it really felt like it took shape against some really surprising backdrops. Across about fifty shows, we really found the sound to go with the lyrics we had. We pushed a lot of things further to make sure the songs were really coming across whatever venue we were playing in.”

That touring crucible bleeds into the record’s very bones.

The band tracked these eleven songs “in a whirlwind week” of live takes at Sickroom Studios in Norfolk following a multi-month European tour, a method that mirrors the album’s heartbeat – everything close, immediate, sharpened by repetition. If Reservoir felt like a haunted room you didn’t want to leave, All The Right Weaknesses feels like changing channels in the same house – the lights flickering, the band moving from slacker-rock churn to alt-country ache to something grungier and grittier, without losing their special spark.

For Braham and his bandmates, that cohesion arrived without a grand manifesto. “We knew we wanted to expand our sound and do something different,” he explains. “Each piece seemed to fall into place and without spending too much time discussing a specific direction we seemed to find ourselves on the same wavelength. I suppose we were spending a lot of time in close proximity. Every step seemed to be the natural one at the time. It never felt like a difficult second album.”

Two specific shifts helped the band move forward into that bolder, fuller sound. “Phoebe’s vocals and playing on a number of instruments enhance every song and add a further dimension to what we can do. Then there’s Emma’s pedal steel, which is such a huge presence on the record and is so uniquely expressive, it’s hard now to imagine Brown Horse without it.” That’s the story of All The Right Weaknesses in miniature: A band learning what they sound like when every voice is allowed to widen the picture.

The album’s title – pulled from the song of the same name – carries spirit of Brown Horse’s lived-in contradictions: The thrill of going further, the anxiety of building something real, the weird math of touring life. “All the Right Weaknesses reflects the contradictions we experienced in trying to be a ‘real’ band and as we toured in places we never thought we would get the chance to,” Braham reflects. “You can read it in a number of ways, but maybe a whole bunch of wrongs make a right. We love doing what we’re doing, and it’s amazing to see people responding to it.”

If Reservoir introduced Brown Horse with one set of genre- and music-related boxes – haunting, intimate, steeped in landscape and disquiet – their sophomore album arrives as a reintroduction via expansion, enhancement, and perhaps even complication.

“I think people might listen to Reservoir and say we are a certain kind of band, but the new record definitely complicates that in a lot of ways. There are consistent elements, but hopefully some surprises, too,” Braham says. “As songwriters I don’t think we feel restricted by genre. Our songs can develop in quite unexpected ways now.”

That freedom shows up in the writing – in images that feel like they’ve been pulled out of the corner of your eye. Ask Braham what lines stick with him, and he answers like someone tracing a web. “I like the part in ‘Verna Bloom’ about ‘strange shapes by the roadside draped in cellophane.’ ‘The reason the trees metamorphosise’ from ‘Dog Rose’ sticks out, too. The repeated ‘it’s not a question of desire’ from ‘Tombland’ and ‘well maybe not exactly, there’s so much I never knew’ from ‘Curse.’ The songs feel like they’re in conversation with each other and we each have our ways of expressing ourselves.”

That conversation extends to the band’s internal dynamic, too – several songwriters, multiple instincts, the excitement of surprising one other. “Favorites are a little tricky for us, because I think we gain so much by having multiple songwriters and the combination is maybe the most exciting thing for me,” Braham says. “I feel like ‘Dog Rose,’ written by Emma, took us in a bit of a new direction and pushed what a Brown Horse song could sound like, and the same with Nyle’s ‘Radio Free Bolinas.’ Patrick’s song ‘Tombland’ has a great feel to it and is named after a part of Norwich we all walk through every day. Then ‘Curse’ is the first song Phoebe has written for the band and so feels particularly fresh. It’s great when people at shows tell us their personal favourites. You can never guess what they’re gonna pick.”

All The Right Weaknesses unfolds less like a sequence of statements than a series of glimpses – intimate moments caught mid-motion, each song offering a slightly different angle on the same unsettled emotional terrain.

The record ebbs and swells, shifting between restraint and release, intimacy and abrasion, as Brown Horse let the songs brush up against one another rather than forcing them into clean resolution. Certain songs emerge as musical and emotional anchors – moments where the album’s temperature, texture, and movement come most clearly into focus. “Verna Bloom” opens the album like a transmission cutting in and out, its images arriving half-formed and emotionally charged. “This tends to be our opener now,” Braham says. “It introduces a lot of the themes for the record… as if it’s all seen through intermittent TV interference.” Roaring to life with an understated swagger, the song flickers between clarity and distortion, its guitars wailing and voices moving in soft pulses as lines like “strange shapes by the roadside draped in cellophane” blur the boundary between memory and motion.

That sense of fragmentary storytelling deepens on “Wisteria Vine,” a brooding, bittersweet meditation that unfolds in pieces rather than straight lines. Written in a single rush, it carries the quiet surrealism of touring life – moments that feel vivid enough to matter, even when they don’t quite connect. “Corduroy Couch” arrives as one of the album’s warmest and most immediate moments – deceptively simple, gently radiant, and dreamily devastating. “The way we found the feel of it really seemed to start us in a new direction,” Braham says, and you can hear it in the song’s easy sway and open-hearted delivery. Its central admission – “I used to want to stick around forever, but I don’t want to anymore” – lands without drama, a realization that settles in slowly and doesn’t ask permission.

If “Corduroy Couch” glows, “Dog Rose” smolders. One of the album’s heaviest and most hypnotic tracks, it stretches Brown Horse’s sound outward, pairing Emma Tovell’s expansive, metamorphic lyrics with grinding guitars and a cathartic release of distortion. “We got to make some of our heaviest sounds yet,” Braham says, and the weight feels earned – not aggressive, but charged, like tension finally allowed to surface. The title track, “All The Right Weaknesses,” turns touring itself into language. Written last, it captures the strange mental loops that come from weeks spent in transit, where exhaustion, humor, and closeness blur together. “At one point we didn’t have a radio or music in the van and we went completely mad,” Braham recalls. The song’s looseness feels intentional – playful on the surface, delightfully unhinged underneath.

The buoyant “Holy Smokes” and driven “Radio Free Bolinas” open the record up again, building a larger, more expansive frame without losing intimacy. With Nyle Holihan switching to bass to give Emma space for sweeping pedal steel lines, the latter song stretches and breathes, rich with imagery and emotional crosscurrents. “The lyrics are particularly dense and full of allusions and unexpected images,” Braham notes – a track meant to be lived with, not decoded all at once.

Further tracks like “Tombland” and “Curse” accentuate Brown Horse’s ability to hook us on a feeling, wielding sweet vocal harmonies and wily guitar licks like two edges of the same sword. Near the record’s end, “Wipers” grounds everything back in place. Set against a hyper-specific map of Norwich, the song moves through familiar streets and small, unglamorous details – the bandstand, the pub, the papered-over windows – until the geography starts to feel emotional. “It’s a strange return journey at the end of the album,” Braham says, and the closing instrumental surge feels less like resolution than release: Motion without destination.

Taken together, All The Right Weaknesses aches in exactly the ways it needs to.

Sonically, it’s broader and bolder than Reservoir – yowling guitars rubbing up against pedal steel, voices weaving in and out of focus – but it never loses the closeness at its core. Nearly a year on, the album still feels alive, marked up by the road and honed by repetition. It doesn’t try to tidy up disorientation into a moral, and it doesn’t rush to explain itself or tidy its feelings into something neat; it simply shows what it looks like to keep moving through uncertainty together, and to let that motion shape the sound.

The album’s contradictions are the point: The road making the band tighter and a little crazier, the sound getting bigger without losing the ‘haunted’ edge, the songs switching channels while staying in conversation. All The Right Weaknesses thrives in that tension, letting abrasion and tenderness coexist, letting guitars snarl and soften in the same breath, letting voices hover between closeness and distance. It aches without posturing, finding its power in feel rather than finish – roughened by repetition, warmed by trust, and alive to the small emotional shifts that accumulate over time.

Nearly a year on, the album hasn’t dulled or settled. It still feels restless, human, and exposed, its songs marked by movement and proximity rather than polish. It remains a gritty fever dream, but one equally filled with care – weight, but also release. All The Right Weaknesses doesn’t ask to be pinned down or neatly summed up; it asks to be lived with, to be returned to, to be felt differently depending on where you are when it meets you.

Heard now, as Brown Horse move forward with their third album Total Dive and its lead single “Twisters,” the band’s sophomore record reads not as a transition to be outgrown, but as a foundation that holds.

It captures a band learning how to expand without drifting, how to let the road shape the songs without erasing their interior life. If All The Right Weaknesses taught Brown Horse how to live inside motion – how to stay open, strange, and connected while everything around them shifts – then it makes sense that what comes next doesn’t arrive out of nowhere. It arrives already carrying the weight, trust, and hard-won clarity this record earned just a year ago.

Brown Horse remain a singular band in Britain’s folk rock / alt-country space – finding the sound to match their own language, discovering that a whole bunch of wrongs can, sometimes, make a right. “I think we’ve learned that touring is kinda hard, but that we want to do it forever and that we just want to write more songs, make more albums, and keep moving,” Braham shares. “We don’t need to worry about where we’re going because we’re not relying on any one person’s ideas. It will come together… we want listeners to hear a band that loves being a band and that loves music. We’re just happy to be here.”

Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Brown Horse’s All the Right Weaknesses with Atwood Magazine as Rowan Braham takes us track-by-track through the music and lyrics of their sophomore album!

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Stream: ‘All the Right Weaknesses’ – Brown Horse

:: Inside All the Right Weaknesses ::

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Verna Bloom

This tends to be our opener now. It’s one that introduces a lot of the themes for the record and shifts in a satisfying way from one section to the next. The lyrics talk about things seen in passing and half remembered memories as if it’s all seen through intermittent TV interference.

Wisteria Vine

The lyrics to this came all in one go and they kinda tell a story in pieces. We worked on this one when we were playing at a venue run by an alternative community at Skogsnäs in Sweden. We had to pop out to do our laundry and were in such an incredible snowy landscape which had absolutely nothing to do with the song.

Corduroy Couch

We worked on this the studio when we were recording Reservoir and the way we found the feel of it really seemed to start us in a new direction. People immediately warm to this one, it’s sort of deceptively simple in a way that makes you want to listen again. “I used to want to stick around forever, but I don’t want to anymore” sums a feeling up pretty well.

Dog Rose

I love the way the parts weave in and out of each other here. Emma’s lyrics are some of my favourite yet and reach further as they expand from the “sheets hanging on the line” to include mountains, images of cells dividing and the landscape in metamorphosis. We also got to make some of our heaviest sounds yet in the breakdown to make this our grungiest song to date.

All the Right Weaknesses

This was the last one to arrive and so specifically talks about touring. It takes a more playful approach in its lyrics which taps into a strange mindset we all found ourselves in after weeks of only really talking to each other. At one point we didn’t have a radio or music in the van and we went completely mad.

Holy Smokes

This is one of Patrick’s and is just so fun to play. It’s been a live favourite for a while and has its own energy. Nyle and Emma swap lead parts as Ben plays almost all fills.

Radio Free Bolinas

Nyle surprised us by switching to bass for his most ambitious song yet, giving Emma plenty of room to fill this one with wild pedal steel lines. We were initially worried about how we’d replicate this on stage, but we eventually got there. The lyrics are particularly dense and full of allusions and unexpected images so plenty to read into.

Tombland

Here it feels like two grown up siblings are talking on the phone, understanding each other in a way only family can, assuring each other they are alright, with a touch of humour quoting Johnny Cash, “I was born in a ring of fire.” They look over each other’s shoulders to learn from each other and manage to maintain an optimistic outlook in spite of everything.

Curse

Phoebe grew up in the States, and it feels like a different sky we’re looking at here, one that’s “real blue.” They look up at the constellations, yet can’t mark out so clearly what the other is really feeling. The song itself has an unusual form and each verse is quite different to the last.

Wipers

The verses feel like a bit of a map of Norwich (where we all live), and Emma has really captured something here. It really feels like you’re driving past the bandstand and then later past The Mischief pub. These places are so familiar to us down to the dead pigeon and the papered over windows. It’s a strange return journey at the end of the album and the big instrumental at the end provides a great climax to the record.

Far-Off Places

We had a last-minute switch with this one. It was always a kind of uncharacteristically danceable song in our live sets. I think that will come back for the odd show. It’s nice for songs to lead multiple lives sometimes.

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