DARRIN BRADBURY RELEASES NEW ALBUM
‘ARTVERTISEMENT’ THIS FRIDAY, PRE-ORDER HERE
Nashville poet, singer/songwriter and painter Darrin Bradbury will be releasing his new album Artvertisement this Friday. Today he is announcing a new set of fall tour dates including two shows in Montana with Todd Snider and headlining dates in Minneapolis, Newport, KY and more. He is also announcing a run of West coast spring 2022 shows with more dates coming soon; all currently announced dates are listed below.
“Darrin Bradbury’s songwriting has always been gloriously left of center … he ratchets up the eccentricity to delirious levels that match our current moment,” recently said Rolling Stone.
Artvertisement is Bradbury’s third album and second release for ANTI-, following his critically acclaimed 2019 LP Talking Dogs & Atom Bombs. The title track, which recalls early Hold Steady with its raucous guitars and Bradbury’s freewheeling, almost conversational delivery, distills this experience into one frantic, infectiously catchy minute, translating that particularly painful meeting into a blistering takedown of the commodification of art. “Artvertisement!” Bradbury sings, nearly yelling. “We put your brand and their brand together.”
That concept recurs across Artvertisement, which tackles the big questions — like why we’re here, and how we can live principled lives in a capitalist hellscape — with vulnerability, heart and plenty of pop culture references. “Exile on Myrtle Beach,” with its sing-along chorus and live show-ready arrangement, follows the imaginary exploits of some of Bradbury’s favorite humorists, like Andy Kaufman and Richard Pryor. “Pizza and Drugs” is the LP’s longest song and its most sonically traditional, with Bradbury daydreaming of reuniting with an ex-love over plaintive piano and a minimalist beat. And “Busted World” uses a folk-song scaffolding to build something of a doomsday pop song, with Bradbury declaring, “The whole thing is a joke and the joke’s on you.”
While Artvertisement was written and recorded months beforehand, Bradbury’s June 2020 diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder and PTSD has reshaped his conception of the album. After receiving his diagnosis from Vanderbilt, Bradbury spent two months in residential treatment in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where he underwent rigorous, often emotionally painful therapy to, as he puts it, “work to become a functioning human.”
“The thing that a lot of people don’t understand is that there is a complete misrepresentation of OCD,” he says. “The suicide rate of people with severe OCD is twice the national average, because you just live with it. It never goes away.”
While music is still his primary focus, Bradbury has leaned into working on visual art, which, like his music, draws out both the darkness and the humor of the everyday. He was first encouraged to draw and paint while in residential treatment, and found that doing so is one of the few things that quiets his mind.
He sells his art on a “pay what you want” model, explaining that he is as happy to sell a painting for a nickel as he is for five hundred dollars. It may not be the kind of financial model that lands him a high-rise office overlooking downtown Nashville, but that’s always been the antithesis of what Bradbury is about. “Do no harm but take what you need,” he says. “Holding on to success, holding onto money… What does it matter? We’re all going to die someday.”
Pre-Order ‘Artvertisement’
1. Field Notes from a College Town
- Artvertisement
- XXYTOPLEFT
4. Exile on Myrtle Beach
5. The Wedding Song
6. Deanna, Deanna
7. Shiny Town
8. Pizza & Drugs
9. 15 Shovels
10. Those Beautiful Days
11. Busted World
12. Mikey Shoulda Died
