Brody Price
Photo: CV Fields
First things first: Brody Price is well aware there’s no consensus on exactly how to describe his latest album, the wryly titled Win a Trip to Palm Springs!
One person’s “folk gentility” is another’s “weighty sludge metal” is another’s “noise rock mayhem,” to borrow just three descriptors appearing in a single paragraph of the record’s press materials.
“I love it so, so much — it’s wonderful,” Price said of his music’s indefinability during a recent conversation. “I feel like I’m maybe a little immune to all of that … I’ve always been straddling multiple things. So, for me, it feels like nothing new.”
However it’s categorized — Price, for his part, tagged these 10 songs as “doom country,” an appellation which appears on the record’s cover art — there’s no question it’s captivating. Price’s reedy, expressive tenor floats atop a gentle acoustic riff on the album-opening “If I Were You” before pivoting to punch through fuzzed-out guitar and thundering drums in “Dying When I Met You.”
Win a Trip to Palm Springs! is out Friday, and Price will celebrate the album’s release with a performance Thursday at Ruins in Deep Ellum.
Win a Trip to Palm Springs! is also notable for being the inaugural release on the Fort Worth label Niles City Records, launched earlier this year by Niles City Sound’s Josh Block and Robert Ellis and artist manager Cara Merendino.
“No matter what our record was gonna sound like, getting to do it with Robert and Cara and Josh and the whole crew — I love them as friends,” Price said. “That world was like an orbit. We wanted to be in that orbit.”
Price is also a vocal advocate for the benefits of therapy, and talked in the past about how being in therapy has benefited him personally and creatively.
“Even if the songs aren’t autobiographical, I’m still getting to work through things,” he said. “Even if it’s … practicing empathy from the point of view of a character I’m making up in a song. I’m getting to go through that thought exercise.”
Above all, Price is hopeful the songs on Palm Springs! provide as much of a release for listeners as they did for him.
“I figured we would name [the album with] something revolving around Palm Springs and vacation,” Price said. “Hopefully, people will listen, and it can serve whatever purpose they need, whether that’s an escape, or to let out some anger — if they need to listen to some loud music in traffic, whatever they need to do. I hope it does it [for them], but I know it did what it needed to do for me.”
Brody Price at Ruins, Dallas. 8 p.m. Oct. 27. Tickets are $10.
Preston Jones is a North Texas freelance writer and regular contributor to KXT. Email him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter (@prestonjones). Our work is made possible by our generous, music-loving members. If you like how we lift up local music, consider becoming a KXT sustaining member right here.
