Brain Holiday is the debut album proper from Dead Gaze, following on from the acclaimed self-titled compilation released by FatCat imprint Palmist in March. Brain Holiday is a confident and ambitious album, which places Cole Furlow's songwriting ability front and center; the move from recording in his bedroom to the famous Sweet Tea studio in Oxford, Mississippi allowing a talented composer of pop songs to emerge from the fuzz that characterized his earlier recordings.
Brain Holiday fulfills this criterion from the start, opening with the trademark thick Dead Gaze guitar sound and plowing into the hook-filled anti-anthem "Yuppies Are Flowers." Elsewhere, "Rowdy Jungle" is probably the biggest and boldest pop song Furlow has ever written, mixing the swagger of Suede with the chiming lead guitar of Joey Santiago while he implores, "please believe me when I say there is absolutely nothing that can get in our way." Dead Gaze still sits comfortably alongside contemporaries such as Cloud Nothings, White Fence, and Dent May, but Brain Holiday is a more varied listen than the self-titled compilation previously released, at times recalling The Flaming Lips, ELO and, with "Stay, Don't Say," a New Age Harry Nillson.
You can listen to the first single from the album, "Rowdy Jungle," over at FADER.
DEAD GAZE
09/10 Tallahassee, FL - Downunder Club at FSU *
10/06 Durham, NC - Duke Coffeehouse at Duke University *
* = w/ Dent May
Brain Holiday
(FatCat / Palmist)
Street Date: October 22, 2013
1.Yuppies Are Flowers
2. Rowdy Jungle
3. Stay, Don't Say
4. Runnin' On The Moon
5.You'll Carry On Real Nice
6. A Different Way
7. Breathing Creatures
8. Possible Embrace
9. Brain Holiday
Photo by James Marshall
Videos