Brian Wright - House On Fire

By the time most artists reach their third album, the goal is usually to make the sound bigger and more elaborately produced, particularly when opting to sign to a national label. But for Brian Wright, the opposite has turned out to be true. Newly aligned with respected Americana and bluegrass label Sugar Hill, the Waco, TX-bred, L.A.-based roots troubadour has instead delivered a self-made album of boldly imagined, starkly personal intent: House On Fire, due March 29th. His band for the first two albums, lovingly named The Waco Tragedies, may be resurrected for touring but this new project features simply Wright, an array of instruments and a sheaf of fine new songs. Things don't get much more "solo" than this.

For Wright, the maturation honed on endless touring has yielded an attitude that reflects both an assured confidence in his own artistry and a desire to delve deeper into it, on his own, make or break. House on Fire is a multi-room structure of diverse mood and texture, at times as intently personal as a whispered confession or as sonically bleak and desolate as a dusty, desert howl. "Maria Sugarcane" is a dark tale of sibling rivalry and tragedy, a Gothic folk bloodletting that lures you in with compelling lyricism while "Striking Matches" rambles with a touch of Lone Star twang and in-your-eye directness. And the dark acoustic atmospheres in the six-minute "Accordion" build steadily with a Neil Young-styled intensity and distorted stormcloud menace. “When people ask what I sound like, I usually say I’m somewhere between Woody Guthrie and Velvet Underground,” says Wright. “This album finally allowed me to make the music the exact way it was in my head.”

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Brian Wright - "Maria Sugarcane" (from the album House On Fire)

Brian Wright - "Accordion" (from the album House On Fire)