A seductive blend of yacht rock, soul, folk, and classic ‘70s pop, The Brook & The Bluff’s ‘This Could All Go Nowhere’ EP is a dreamy, golden-hued reverie: A happy accident whose sweet n’ sunny tones, sultry, soaring choruses, and spellbinding lyrics capture the Nashville band’s warmth, energy, and magic.
for fans of Mt. Joy, Lord Huron, Wilderado
“Bad Bad News” – The Brook & The Bluff
Happy accidents happen when you least expect them – and the results can be truly extraordinary.
For The Brook & The Bluff, a series of recording sessions with absolutely no strings attached led to some of the most exciting music of their career. The Nashville band’s latest EP is a breathtakingly beautiful golden-hued reverie: A daydream come to life, full of sunny, sweet tones, sultry, seductive choruses, and spellbinding lyrics that ache inside and out. A breathtakingly beautiful blend of yacht rock, soul, folk, and classic ’70s pop, This Could All Go Nowhere could very well stay true to its name, and become a deep cut for the diehards; or it could be the start of a bold new era for one of the most exciting indie bands of the 2020s.
That’s the thing about happy accidents: You never quite know where they’ll take you.
These moments I lay here,
with nothing to say.
You’re supposed to be so near,
I’m so far away.
It goes on and on and on again that feeling
It goes on and on and on again
I feel like I’m falling apart.
Baby, it’s bad bad news,
but you should let me down easy
Darling, it’s sad but true
you need to let me down easy
I’ll get pretty close
but I don’t follow through well,
anything that hurts you know
I’m running like hell.
Darling, it’s bad bad news
but you should let me down easy.
– “Bad Bad News,” The Brook & The Bluff
Released November 14, 2024 via AWAL, This Could All Go Nowhere is a spiritually uplifting, smile-inducing kiss of sonic sunshine from a band that wants nothing more than for you to feel as good as they did while making these songs. The Birmingham-born, Nashville-based five-piece comprised of Joseph Settine, brothers Kevin and John Canada, Fred Lankford, and Alec Bolton, The Brook & The Bluff have over the past eight years, found success throughout North America and beyond, with fans fawning over their stunning vocal harmonies, their intimate, nuanced lyricism, and their utterly enchanting, inescapably catchy melodies.
Atwood Magazine previously hailed the band’s fourth studio album Bluebeard (released in September 2023) as a “soulful, swashbuckling triumph,” going on to praise it as calm, cathartic, and utterly captivating: “We’d call them happy tears, but that would be inaccurate – a disservice to the magic of Bluebeard, whose songs, so filled with stunning color and soulful sound, hit with an unexpected intimacy and raw vulnerability that catches listeners off-guard, sending shivers down the spine as the Alabama band open their hearts and delve unapologetically into the beautiful, yet brutal depths of human experience and emotion,” we wrote in a feature published last year. “Bluebeard is a breathtaking triumph of sweet folk and gentle soul that finds The Brook & The Bluff more exposed, and more at home and in their element, than ever before.”
This Could All Go Nowhere arrives just fourteen months after Bluebeard, and follows an extensive North American tour that found The Brook & The Bluff supporting Stephen Sanchez and Rainbow Kitten Surprise.
“This Could All Go Nowhere is a happy accident,” frontman Joseph Settine tells Atwood Magazine. “Five songs that we recorded just to be in the studio together – to make things together. No attachment, no album looming – just making music for the sake of it. After putting so much into the cohesiveness of Bluebeard, we felt like just being a band again, and so here we are, being a real-life music band. The result is probably the most fun collection of songs that we have made to date. There is no pressure, no expectations, just music – because at the end of the day, this really could all go nowhere. And that would be just fine.”
“The really freeing thing for us going into recording this group of songs was that there was no vision at all,” he explains. “We were just going into the studio to make stuff for the sake of making it, to have fun. I think if anything, we found that by the end of recording the songs that some kind of cohesiveness in the energy behind them started to appear. It wasn’t until it started to feel like the songs could all exist together that we realized we even had anything.”
For Settine and co., it’s the radiant energy of these songs that sets this collection apart. “This Could All Go Nowhere brings us to this space that feels electric,” he beams. “Not in the sense of the instruments, but the energy underlying every song. I think there is an almost live feel to these songs that is different from Bluebeard or Yard Sale, where we were really trying to go as far down the rabbit hole of studio experimentation and perfection. With these new songs, and moving forward, we want to inject the energy that we think we bring to our live show into the recordings.”
The EP’s title is as cheeky as it is honest; the point, for The Brook & The Bluff, is to have fun doing what they’re doing.
“Naming it This Could All Go Nowhere just seemed silly, and also kind of a truth to us,” he smirks. “At the end of the day, this could all just end and really go nowhere! People may not listen to it, people might love it. Maybe we get into that tour bus on the back of these songs, but probably not. Who cares? We were making these songs for the love of making them.”
Highlights abound throughout the EP’s 18-minute runtime, with each track inviting audiences to bask in a moment of sun-kissed warmth and dreamy connection. All five songs deserve to be listened to in full, starting with the record’s lead single and opener “Bad Bad News,” which kicks everything off with a sweet, seductive sonic heat laced with aching emotion.
“It’s a song about being afraid of your own feelings and how they might affect another person, so you just bottle them up and subconsciously hope that the other person does something about it,” Settine says. “It’s about how the fear of opening up can paralyze you and make everything worse! The bad bad news is that I can’t do what I need to do myself.” Rich, stacked vocal harmonies reminiscent of The Beatles and The Beach Boys add fresh layers of depth and feeling to the band’s performance, making the rise from gentle verses to soaring choruses all the more exhilarating:
These moments I lay here,
Staring at the ceiling fan,
the shadows are boxing
They fight with those slippery hands.
It goes on and on and on again that feeling
It goes on and on and on again
I feel like I’m falling apart.
Baby, it’s bad bad news, but you should let me down easy
Darling, it’s sad but true you need to let me down easy
I’ll get pretty close but I don’t follow through well,
anything that hurts you know I’m running like hell.
Darling, it’s bad bad news but you should let me down easy.
“‘Calling Cards’ is probably the overall highlight for us as a group, maybe of all of our songs in total, and for me it is incredibly significant,” Settine says on the topic of favorites. “The first version of that song was written in 2012 or 2013, only the second or third song in my journey as a songwriter, and to have it come all this way and turn into what it is (an absolute banger) closes a loop in the most satisfying way that I could never have imagined. I did not like that song for years and the guys really pushed to have it finished. Best push in the history of the world.”
“‘Blue Jean’ as a whole is [also] really special to me,” he adds. “It came in less than an hour, and also I am a sucker for things being personified in books, music, movies, wherever. So to be able to have a feeling, in this case sadness or depression, become kind of a person with a name in my head was cool to have happen. I also truly love the first verse of ‘This Could All Go Nowhere’: ‘Pretend / that it’s really my weakness / and I feel I can’t prepare / for this all to go nowhere.’ It bolted into my mind picking up lunch for all of us as we tried to record ‘Sold Out’ and to me it is such a lovely little reminder to not take myself so seriously all of the time.”
Blue Jean she follows me around,
I can’t breathe.
My feet are floating off the ground,
When I speak,
It takes me somewhere I don’t need.
Everything is everything.
The way she’s holding me now.
Indeed, this could all go nowhere.
Songs and EPs come and go all the time – but we’ve got a sneaking suspicion this latest batch will be sticking around for a long while. As irresistible as they are utterly infectious, these five tracks capture the magic of The Brook & The Bluff – a band who, at the end of the day, are having the time of their lives, whether or not we’re tuned in.
“I hope that listeners take away the energy that we put into the songs, and that maybe they can get a bit of a lift whenever they visit,” Settine shares. “Those songs give me a little push to keep it going, and that’s what I will hold onto forever!”
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside The Brook & The Bluff’s This Could All Go Nowhere with Atwood Magazine as Joseph Settine and his bandmates take us track-by-track through the music and lyrics of their latest EP!
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:: stream/purchase This Could All Go Nowhere here ::
:: connect with The Brook & The Bluff here ::
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Stream: ‘This Could All Go Nowhere’ – The Brook & The Bluff
:: Inside This Could All Go Nowhere ::
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Bad Bad News
“Bad Bad News” is a song about being afraid of your own feelings and how they might affect another person, so you just bottle it up and subconsciously hope that the other person does something about it. It’s about how the fear of opening up can paralyze you and make everything worse! The bad bad news is that I can’t do what I need to do myself. It is set to happy music so…. classic b&b.
Blue Jean
“Blue Jean” is an extended metaphor for depression. This thing that follows you around and weighs you down as you go, but you can’t shake it. Sometimes it’s because you don’t want to, sometimes it’s because you just can’t. It can feel like you’re just floating thru life and don’t have much power to change it, but you can always reverse the piano in the bridge.
Calling Cards
The oldest original song in the band’s existence, we have been working on “Calling Cards” for literally a decade (and change). The first verse and instrumental breakdown are parts of the third song I had ever written, and they stuck around to this final version finally coming out in 2024. It’s a song that started about the insecurity of your 20s, finding the path to finding yourself – what are the calling cards of a person? What makes me, me? Twelve years later and there are still parts of me that feel close to being figured out, but not totally.
This Could All Go Nowhere
This song was a happy accident. We were working on a completely different version of “Sold Out” and when I went out to pick up lunch for everyone, the verse melody popped into my head. We decided to follow it and ended up with this absolute heater. One of the strangest and most fun recording days we have ever had because we went in working on one idea and in the middle of the day it took a complete left turn. It feels like a bit of the thesis of the whole EP – a happy accident.
Sold Out
“Sold Out” is about the feeling of connecting with someone on the same page in a relationship when you thought that maybe they were one foot out the door. To me, it’s the feeling of finally being open with someone, and the relief that it brings when you find you’re actually aligned in your thoughts. My favorite thing about this song is the outro, it just morphs into this weird jazzy world that was spontaneous on the day we tracked it. Almost like it’s leading you into the next place. Not that we are going full jazz, the outro is just inviting in a weird way that I love.
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:: stream/purchase This Could All Go Nowhere here ::
:: connect with The Brook & The Bluff here ::
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© Bryant Bural & Noah Tidmore
© Bryant Bural & Noah Tidmore:: Stream The Brook & The Bluff ::
