Tom Brosseau
North Dakota Impressions

I believe that Tom Brosseau's appearance matches exactly what one might imagine when listening to his music. Born and raised in Grand Forks, North Dakota (but currently based in Los Angeles, California, where he occasionally spends time playing with that crazy friend of his, John Reilly), the third-largest city in the state after Fargo and Bismarck, Tom is what I would undoubtedly call an attractive man. I mean he possesses a particular charm and his appearance has something magnetic and movements that are elegant and refined, qualities that could very well (without obviously wanting to give in to unnecessary and improper comparisons) equate to the same magnetism and those same class and elegance that the great David Bowie might have had.

Tall, slender and slim of build, blue eyes, blonde hair, and a face that is both sweet and marked by strong features, signs of experience and a life lived with that analytical and inquisitive spirit of someone who always wants to delve deep into the contemplation of things. He always dresses in an elegant and composed manner. Not in the sense that he is devoted to the practice and following of a particular fashion. Tom Brosseau actually possesses that typical 'classic' charm. He dresses in a classic-traditional way that once might have even been defined as ordinary, with classic trousers or at the limit jeans and light shirts that seem freshly ironed. He always has the appearance of a 'well-put-together' person, a style that emanates a fresh fragrance of acacia flowers and the reminiscent smell of evergreen pines and spruce forests that infest the Red River Valley, where the river has its source, at the confluence of the Bois de Sioux and Otter Tail rivers before traversing the United States of Minnesota and North Dakota to Manitoba, Canada, where it flows into Lake Winnipeg.

His latest album, 'North Dakota Impressions', is the third chapter of a trilogy that began in 2014 with the release of 'Grass Punks' and continued the following year with 'Perfect Abandon', released in 2015 and produced by the famous and charming PJ Harvey. The album was released last September 16 on Crosbill Records and sees the return of Sean Watkins as producer (who had already worked on the first album of the trilogy and is the only authentic collaborator on this particular occasion) and was recorded in Silverlake and Highland Park in Los Angeles, California.

Obviously, since we are talking about a trilogy, it follows that there must necessarily be a concept at the core of the project that Tom has wanted to carry forward over the past three years. All three albums, in fact, are to be understood collectively and as such aim to take the listener on a journey through the places where Tom was born and raised and which he illustrates in his songs with memories and recollections, visions of distant places and moments until reaching that (not just ideal) place called home. A journey composed of an alternation of light and shadow as always happens in the reflections of memory and a project dedicated to his birthplace that might somehow remind one of what Sufjan Stevens set out to do about fifteen years ago. That project then remained unfinished and destined to remain so, with which Stevens intended to dedicate an album to each of the fifty US states but instead stopped with only the publication of 'Sufjan Stevens Presents... Greetings from Michigan, the Great Lake State' in 2003 and 'Sufjan Stevens Invites You To: Come On Feel the Illinoise' released two years later by Asthmatic Kitty.

This naturally does not mean that there are all these similarities between these two songwriters, even considering the fact that Stevens has somehow now split into a pop persona and that of a songwriter whose songs, to me, are often rather whiny. Nor do I believe there are many common points between Tom Brosseau and what I, along with him, consider the greatest contemporary American songwriter, that is Bill Callahan. Who, for that matter, has a completely different story from Tom's. Born in New Hampshire, he actually grew up between Silver Spring in Maryland and England before starting to tour the USA: Georgia and then also California, where he became an icon of the lo-fi movement during the nineties with the alias 'Smog' before deciding to adopt his name from the albums released at the end of the last decade.

Two completely different stories and two different styles, but perhaps I am not entirely wrong if I recognize in both the same intent to tell through their songs what is the reality under every possible aspect of the country (or a piece of the country) in which they live, the United States of America. In the case of Tom Brosseau, in particular, it is impossible not to speak of what one might define as a kind of true devotion to the place where he was born and raised because the trilogy otherwise, and perhaps in a particular way this last album, is a tribute to what he himself defines as his way of feeling and conceiving the idea of 'home', something he considers the most precious thing he possesses and an emotional heritage he is absolutely determined to preserve.

Apparently, superficially listening to the album, and wanting to necessarily categorize its contents, someone might define this singer-songwriter's sounds as if these necessarily had a rural setting, and as if he were consequently a kind of 'cowboy'. But things are not that way. Naturally, Tom Brosseau is an American singer-songwriter and his music can be defined in all respects as 'Americana', there are folk elements and country music elements, but neither the sounds nor the lyrics are 'rustic' in the same way that the songs of some of the greatest bards of American music like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Woody Guthrie might be. From the first to the last song, 'North Dakota Impressions', following the same pattern as the previous chapters, wants instead to be an ideal journey that Tom Brosseau undertakes to carry with him the listeners to what are the surroundings and realities of the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota. He thus builds what he himself defines as a real 'diorama' in every respect and made up of memories, images, sensations, and emotions linked to that place that he calls and considers home. His songs are somehow scenic and engaging representations and have that magical power to drag the listener inside these structures set up by what at this point I want to define more as a storyteller than a singer-songwriter, one who constructs stories and reconstructs roads and architectural plans, geographical maps and the faces and emotions of men and women with his music and his incredible voice, at the same time externalizing sensations and deep emotions, nostalgia, melancholy and true love, but above all hope. The true and only feeling that perhaps gives a concrete sense to what 'home' actually means, a place where we return, letting ourselves be cradled by the music in our memories, and perhaps, immersed in what would then be the most traditional and typical stream of consciousness, casting a glance towards the future.