Blush

Brandon (born Brandon Joseph) sees his forthcoming EP Blush as an expression of love and a study in contrasts, most notably specificity and universality. “Love can be super deep and super focused, but blushing can happen to anyone, and can come from anyone. It’s everyone’s.” It makes sense, then, that Blush is such an intimate introduction: small and sweet but bursting with imagination, with love, and with Brandon’s singular, acrobatic voice front and center.

More than a singer-songwriter or polymath of any particular kind, Brandon is a musician’s musician, through and through. Born to Trinidadian parents and raised by his single mother, Brandon grew up in Riverside, CA, a smaller city not typically known for a deep artistic output.  His love for music and songwriting came early, and proved persistent. Growing up, Brandon had no immediate access to a music program, and even when he found one he encountered new hurdles, first to find a left-handed guitar, then a teacher who could teach him. Early releases were a little sparer, yet beautiful early markers of Brandon’s personal and intimate songwriting. As his palette grew, so did his confidence and vision; an inveterate multi-instrumentalist, he wrote and recorded every song and every instrument on Blush himself.

Sonically, Blush brings to mind Joy Oladokun, the best of Sampha, or Blood-Bank-era Bon Iver. Rooted in folk and acoustic music but turned sideways and upside down, there’s something prismatic about Blush, and about the way Brandon breaks songwriting’s pieces apart and clicks them back together again. Opening track “Offering” is a peaceful deliverance of gratitude, love and faith. And when Brandon sings “You’re my resting place…” , the line itself feels like an exhale, like coming home. But the song builds into something bigger, a love song that yearns and celebrates with real ferocity. “Falling” showcases just how stunning and special Brandon’s voice is. It’s not R&B, but it’s not without a wink to Frank Ocean or even Babyface. With a spare guitar riff buoyed by echoes, delicate drums, and layers of Brandon’s vocals, it’s a love song for lovers with a simple, all-timer hook that declares “every night and day, I can’t stop falling for you.”

Recorded just a few months prior to Blush’s release, these four songs carry an urgency befitting Brandon’s first release with Secretly Canadian. “There are songs on my next album that I made in 2018,” he says. “They still feel true to me, but their meanings might change over time. These feel so immediate. I’m proud of them,” he says, “and I’m also proud of what I’m saying in them. They’re songs to make you feel,” Brandon says plainly. “They invite you in and they’re joyful.”

Blush is in some ways a prologue to the deeper memoir that will be Brandon’s forthcoming debut album, due in 2025. The EP is a snapshot of the current moment before his bigger, life-spanning tome, a nighttime whisper before a bright, airy dawn. By bringing us to the current moment first, Brandon shows us who he is: content and confident in his present, inviting us in with beauty, generosity, and a taste of what’s to come.