After You by Brady Earnhart

After You by Brady Earnhart is a treat not just for the ears, but for the heart and mind as well. The songs are varied in tone and content, but the guitarwork and voice of Earnhart work with each other to tie the album together. Similarly, the polished and poetic lyrics mark the songs’ common origin.

The first track on the album, “Stephen Crane,” opens with the sound of a soulful cello before going on to tell a story worthy of the 19th-century novelist and poet. “King of My Living Room,” the song that follows, is, at first glance, a bit removed from such literary sensibilities. A closer look, however—a second listen—reveals otherwise. When Earnhart says with earnestness that “I’d rather sing from a futon|than be a ol’ Wayne Newton,” there is more to the lyric than such a humorously-forced rhyme should, by rights, convey. Here, as in the rest of song, lies all the heartache and fragile strength of being human: of being doomed and wise enough to see it, but dumb enough to keep trying—to keep being—anyway.

Depression and hope, strength and weakness, and comedy and tragedy, are sometimes difficult to pick apart. The songs on this album continue to explore these and other themes through the retelling of the concrete, and lyrics that ghost past your ears so easily the first time will return to haunt you, as each listen-through grants them further depth and meaning.

While two of the tracks are Earnhart’s take on traditional songs, the strongest pieces on the album are the original ones, filled as they are with lyrics containing the sort of intimate detail that only a true poet can recognize as being vital and offer up to the rest of us as a gift, wrapped here in music that invites us back time and again to lose ourselves in the process of rediscovery.

Visit bradyearnhart.com for more information about Brady and his music.