There's a clear split between the old songs - dark, sad, confused - and the new - self-assured, fun, free. 'That was the biggest change for me, just writing and playing music when I'm feeling good, instead of when I'm feeling sad.' With six of those songs home-recorded with the early iteration of her new lineup, she pulled another four from the Willow sessions, a way of closing one chapter and opening a new one. Her main goal was just to write songs that felt good, that translated her newfound positivity. 'There's something about that kind of music that just makes me feel really good inside,' she says. She was much happier and embraced 'absurdist existentialism' - 'where you realize that nothing really has any meaning, and that it's pretty funny that we're here at all.' She was also bored of indie rock, and for her new songs she looked towards her upbringing among country and folk music, and her fascination with Parsons' Cosmic American Music. During the pandemic, she began writing again. Backed by Theo Woodward on drums and Pete Gill on bass, it was dark, and angsty, consisting of songs written between the ages of 16 and 18 and reflecting the depression that defined that time for her. The following year, she went out to Willow, New York - a tiny hamlet outside of Woodstock - and recorded a follow-up album with producer Paco Cathcart that she ended up shelving. In 2018, at the age of 17, Medosch put out her debut Florry album Brown Bunny (Sister Polygon). As a teenager she got into obscure underground rock and power pop, influences she channeled in the band she initially named Francie Cool, which would later transition into Florry (these days it's a solo project, in which she's backed by Jared Radichel on bass, John Murray on guitar and Joey Sullivan on drums). But I came around to it very quickly,' she laughs. I think I wanted an Xbox or something that year. 'I was actually very bummed out at first. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, the seminal 2002 album by the latter became formative to a young Francie's love of music - 'I never really got into Sgt Pepper or anything, so I think that album kinda took the place of that.' She learned violin for a while, then she was a natural on piano, but that stuff bored her. Her mom loved music she played all kinds of stuff around the house, but mostly alt-country like Gillian Welch and Wilco. Medosch grew up outside of Philadelphia in a family home that encompassed three cats, a dog and a pig. On Big Fall, she embraces it like an old friend. Sheridan Frances 'Francie' Medosch wouldn't be born for another 28 years after Parsons' 1973 death, but that Cosmic American sound was waiting for her all the same. "Gram Parsons coined the phrase 'Cosmic American Music' to describe the synthesis of country, blues, rock and soul that he traded in. A classic from front to back." -Mark Lanegan, 2020ΔΆ021 release. Puritan is an album that is all heartache and rebirth, resignation and joy, the kind of record that is so needed but all too rare these days. From the hypnotic repetition on the extended instrumental outro of title-track opener 'Puritan', the wounded grace of 'Depending', to the fragile beauty of the Velvets-esque duet with Claudia Groom, 'I'm the Only One for You', and the ghost of Alex Chilton echoing through 'The Bragging Rights', onto the GBV-like firestorm of 'Periscope Kids', and ending with the On The Beach era Neil Young minimal strum of his cover of Karl Hendricks' 'The Night Has No Eyes', Brokaw has crafted an understated masterpiece. Puritan is his tenth solo album and it's a killer. In a career spanning thirty-plus years he has been in countless bands (Come, Codeine and The Lemonheads, to name a few) has been a sideman with everyone from Thurston Moore to GG Allin, pounded countless stages on nonstop tours, and played on over seventy recordings. "Chris Brokaw is the consummate underground rock musician.
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