top of page
press conference
JEREMY ZUCKERand CHELSEA CUTLERon their album, brent iii
WORDS by Tessa Swantek TALENTS Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler PR °1824
“Who could have known that a house all alone could feel this good?"
An empty house is so loud; echoes shake and scatter wall to wall, fireplaces crackle with chatter, floors groan, and clocks click - each second asking to be heard. In “A-Frame” from brent iii, Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler sing, Baby, it's your world, I'm just happy that you let me in. This lyric feels like it perfectly encapsulates the warmth of the living, breathing world that is brent. Jeremy and Chelsea describe the world as “bottled magic,” and I get the sense that they too just feel happy that brent lets them in, like an open door soaked in golden light. Time after time.
Chelsea says, “What brent is has stayed so true and is the core [even in us changing all the time]” while Jeremy says, “We always say we want brent to feel like a cozy, safe place for people. I think that comes from us being such good friends.” For their live set on the brent forever tour, you see caramel leather couches lit by honey toned lamp light before you ever see them. Their set starts with a projector screen playing memories from their collaboration journey. They walk in as if ducking through a familiar door frame—heads slightly down—and turn their backs to the audience watching the projector. Chelsea sits on the couch and Jeremy is cross-legged on the stage floor. Immediately, they are a part of the audience, the occupants of brent’s space.
I felt a silent nostalgia spread over the crowd and was taken back to school days when the TV cart would roll in–when you knew that at least for an hour you could shut out the fluorescent light, sit on the floor, and just be. Like the world of brent, the silence throughout the show was also loud. It was a good silence–one that Chelsea kept calling “beautifully attentive.” During the press conference, Jeremy tells a story about writing “i miss you” and says “We were watching Midsommar and The Snow Society without the sound on. Chelsea was facing the projector on the couch and I was on the ground in front of the couch playing guitar and we were recording a voice memo. We were just writing the whole song while watching and so zoned out but locked in.” The start of the live set feels like it mimics this memory.
"We want brent to feel like a cozy, safe place for people."
A-frame by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler
OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
The live set starts with the album’s opening track, “ashes & rust” which welcomes you right in sonically. When Jeremy talks about the album’s production, he says “When you’re working on a song, it kind of becomes a race against the magic disappearing. When you write something that’s good, there’s a lot of magic in there. Producing is like trying to bottle up that magic.” Chelsea says, “I felt really strongly about ‘ashes & rust’ being the opener for the sonic palette. I love how the song builds. Jeremy is so talented at creating these textures that really put you in the world.” There’s so much texture in the very first sounds right before Chelsea’s beautiful voice comes in and sets the scene of a room, not only in the way it looks, but also in the emotional context it holds. She sings:
Back seat, eleven hours
Rinse off in the shower
Goodnight
Goodnight
Glued to your favorite chair
One deck for solitaire
I'm fine
I'm fine
There’s a palpable tired loneliness at the very start, but one that still manages to feel good. Most reflections do seem to always have some sort of glow.
“A-frame” houses a lot of the brent world, quite literally. Chelsea shares, “We knew we loved ‘A-frame’ from the get-go because it’s feel-good and we wrote it in an A-frame which you can really hear in how big the song is.” Jeremy describes the track as “wholesome and approachable.” The warmth of their friendship in these intimate spaces is perhaps what makes all of brent so “wholesome and approachable.” Chelsea says, “We really vent to each other about things going on in our lives. If one of us is writing about this specific thing, the other is there to support getting it out of them.” In the music video for “black & white,” one frame stops on Jeremy’s hand resting on Chelsea’s back as they watch the sun set in orange and red over the mountains.
"When you're writing a song, it kind of becomes a race against the magic dissapearing."
JEREMY ZUCKER
Chelsea talks about how special it felt to write “and the government too!” as she says, “We wrote it in the same cabin in Big Bear as we did ‘A-frame’ and it was the first night. It was January and freezing so we had a fire going. The sun was setting. It got us in our feels pretty quickly. There was this crazy palpable magic when we sat down to start it. It just came from such an honest conversation about what Jeremy was going through.” Some of the lyrics are:
Oh, the things I would do
Just to be here with you
I would scream at the stars
For keeping us apart
And the government too
Chelsea continued, “[In our conversation], Jeremy had said, ‘I would scream at the stars’ and then laughed and said ‘and the government too.’ I loved that moment of realness when we decided to keep ‘and the government too’ in the lyrics and try not to be so romantic with it.”
and the government too by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler
OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO
In brent iii, nothing is hidden with sound, just amplified. It makes the lyrics feel like they are being screamed at the stars (and the government too, of course); They exist in wide open space even if they are said quietly. It’s what I hear in the harmonized buildup at the chorus of “ashes & rust,” the way I miss you is whispered and layered under I need you in “i miss you,” the desperation in Chelsea’s voice in her solo song “love you into loving me” when she sings, I can need you more than water and in her “just breathe” bridge ending: How does anybody think I could do okay at all?
Jeremy recalls his favorite lyrics from the album being in the second verse of "and the government too!":
Isn't it nice to imagine?
In twenty years, we'll all be laughing
One of our kids will be asking
Since you both made all this happen
How does it feel to just know?
He says, “I think it’s a beautiful way to view a problem in the present of imagining it being solved in the future.” Jeremy and Chelsea speak with the same fondness toward “and the government too!” even though it is mostly Jeremy’s story. Chelsea says they are “friends before anything else” and that speaks to their deep love and respect for the other’s separate world. Their separate musical identities also enhance the other as Chelsea laughs about sneaking videos of Jeremy doing production since she says he's “light years ahead” of her.
Jeremy speaks on Chelsea’s spontaneous creativity as he says, “I have all these walls up when I’m working on something. I’ll know if I like something a little too soon sometimes and Chelsea has taught me to shut down that part of my brain when I’m creating.” With each other, there is an openness to say what they may not otherwise have been comfortable saying even in more simple lyrics like I don’t know if I’ll be okay in Jeremy’s solo song, “toothbrush song” or I tell myself I'm getting by, it isn't true in “just breathe.”
The album closes with “good things,” which Chelsea says “felt like the perfect way to wrap up because it’s about the magic in things being finite.” However, when they are asked about whether they might create another brent project in the future, Jeremy says, “We’re not closing the door. We’ll never say never. Chelsea and I will always be collaborating so it’s a matter of in what form we collaborate.”
Even though good things never stay, brent always does, door wide open.
Brent forever by Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler
OFFICIAL TEASER VIDEO
bottom of page