The Minnesota-raised, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Brennan Wedl is announcing her self-titled album and ANTI- Records debut, to be released August 21. Wedl was previously in the band Dazey & the Scouts, which garnered a dedicated following with their only LP ‘Maggot’. Now embarking on a solo music career, it is on the album’s first single ‘Pretty Little Fantasy’ that Wedl declares a message of personal power and gender expression, disconnecting from the gaze of others to fully embrace herself.
A snarling rock song that is equal parts Hole and Sheryl Crow, Wedl mixes imagery of roses with bleeding teeth; a well-meaning daughter and a crawling creature. “I’m not a girl, I’m a freakazoid” she bellows before the open-armed release of a chorus announcing she’s “not everything you think you can see.” Prodding at societal perception, Wedl says the song is an ode to the murkiness of your twenties, and how fantasizing can allow us to be more honest with ourselves. Directed by Wedl, watch her and her band gleefully rock out to the song below.
Watch / Listen to ‘Pretty Little Fantasy’
Wedl enlisted Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) and Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Hurray for the Riff Raff, Mavis Staples) to co-produce and play on the album, with instrumentalists Lindsey Jordan (Snail Mail), Colin Croom and Matt McCaughan also sprinkled throughout. Together, they formed a middle ground between punk, grunge and Americana––‘grungetry’ as they affectionately call it––capturing all tracks within a 10 day stay at Cook’s studio in Durham, NC. Wedl’s songs were recorded live as a band, soaking up the collective energy and shaking off any kind of preciousness about the outcome. It’s a county fair carousel, housing a God-fearing Midwestern teenager; a sharp-tongued DIY punk rocker; a heartbroken, dejected road dog and the newcomer at the Nashville honky-tonk.
Brennan Wedl is a testament to collaboration: with old selves, the selves yet-to-be and the friends helping you along the way. Growing up is embarrassing and reckless, uncertain and strange, so it makes sense to look for an anchor amidst the chaos. “The archetype of Daddy is something I’ve been searching for all my life, but turns out, the daddy I’ve been looking for has been me all along,” Wedl says. “Be your own daddy.”
Following a sold out run of shows this spring with Waxahatchee and MJ Lenderman, this fall Wedl will perform a hometown set at Third Man Records’ Blue Room in Nashville as a part of Americanafest before heading out with Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy on their East coast run.
Brennan Wedl
Brennan Wedl
Out August 21 via Anti- Records
1. Scorpio
2. I Know How This Goes
3. Pretty Little Fantasy
4. High Priestess
5. Tasmanian Devil
6. Just Another Daddy Who Did Me Wrong
7. Let’s Be Models
8. Airplane Movies
9. I Wanna Be Your TV
10. Fake Cowboy
11. Two Dollar Pistol
12. June Gloom
13. When The Crazy Comes Out
