Have Milwaukee’s Brief Candles come full circle, but unwittingly so?
Take a look at their album cover art and compare their 2003 debut with the art for their forthcoming record, Unfinished Nature. The similarities imply a 360-degree journey, but it seems that’s just accidental “kismet,” according to Brief Candles’ Jen Boniger.
Yet, there’s an immediate visual connection between the two bookend releases: unadorned and scrawny flower stems, set on a simple backdrop. It’s the vision of those unadorned stems that easily set thoughts adrift, not unlike Brief Candles’ music — the fragility of those flowers representative of seasonal changes on Earth and in life, perfect for entering dream spaces.
In reality, the longtime guitar-centric quartet has no intention of actually “coming full circle” and wrapping things up after over 20 years in existence. The core trio of Boniger (guitar/vocals), Kevin Dixon (guitar/vocals/synths) and Drew Calvetti (bass) — alongside drummer radishbeat — have always been intent on simply doing their own thing for the mere love of writing, recording and playing. As a result, they operate on their own timelines.
These candles are very much still burning, and the band is very conscious of keeping things fresh, blowing new life into their self-formed standards that have captured fans not just in Milwaukee, but far beyond it.
Dixon talked about the band’s inventiveness during our recent conversation: ”If any one of us starts to rehash something, we all kind of just say, ‘Well, that kind of sounds like a half dozen things you've already done. This doesn't need to be made again.’ And so it kind of pushes us to continually, not necessarily reinvent ourselves, but kind of do something new. Like, don't be boring!”
From the get-go, Brief Candles have been tagged as a shoegaze band — a genre term that can be almost just as divisive as “emo.” But, in reality, they have multiple delightfully crunchy and sweet layers of post-punk, psych and dreamy krautrock. Shoegaze is just one small ingredient, as evidenced by the songs on Unfinished Nature.
The band still doesn’t seem bothered by the narrow-minded tag, though they would be the first to point out they’re into creating much more than shoegaze’s typical enveloping waves of sound on pedalboards. There are those bright guitar tones found in dream pop, the ample reverb of psych and the persistent propulsiveness of the beat, tapping into both punk and krautrock.
“When we first started, we were always called shoegaze,” Boniger explained. “But we weren't really that ‘shoegaze.’ It's just compared to everything else that was happening. … We’re not traditional. We play a lot of shoegaze shows where we’re always kind of the odd man out.”
Release after release, Brief Candles have progressively leaned into their own thing harder by putting more into the vocals. Why the shift? Maybe it was simply nurture versus nature for Dixon and his wife (Boninger) since becoming parents several years ago.
“We would sing a lot more to [our daughter] in general, and with that sing-song-y thing I remember going, ‘Man, I haven't sung this much in my life.’ … And I'm in a band!” Dixon recalled.
“There have been past albums where we've tried songwriting a little bit different, where we tried to carve out room for vocal melodies more, where maybe before we would just write a song and then just put something over it. Then, when we got a different drummer, our songs were maybe not quite as dense. When we recorded, we tried to carve out more, like, ‘This is the area for this guitar, and this is the area for this guitar,’ so that the vocals could kind of pop out a little bit more.”
That “pop” is what has this newest album standing head and shoulders above its predecessors. It feels like Brief Candles had locked in their groove a while ago, but now the sparkle that was just glimmering below the surface is front and center.
And while there’s something to be said for consistency — those hallmark big guitar sounds, those precise drums, those sweeping effects — when the listener connects with the humans making the music through their stories and their voices, that’s where a full-circle moment actually happens.
It’s a tangible connection of reinvention to those who have been following you for years and are bending their ear to follow the sound you’re creating. To those who are just finding you, listening to your stories and hearing your voices with fresh ears. To everyone feeling the collective and fleeting joy of being a human, connected among the sound waves. After over two decades of making albums, that’s a great thing to come away with in this labor of love called making music.
Listen to our full conversation using the player at the top of the page, and catch Brief Candles at Anodyne on Bruce with Milwaukee bands Haunter and Lghtninging for an album-release eve celebration Oct. 24. Brief Candles’ new album, Unfinished Nature, is out on Triple Eye Industries the following day everywhere you find music.
