Brand New Trash - Right in Front of You (2020)

Right in Front of You is a perfect title for the new album by San Francisco’s Brand New Trash. The album is a brash, visceral expression of universal longing, but with an eye toward the inevitable conclusion that whatever you seek is endlessly abundant, as long as you take the time to embrace it. Throughout this nostalgic road trip past broken hearts, lost teenage optimism, and ever-receding memories of home, the band examines the kind of molecular-level yearning every soul wrestles with over the course of a meaningful life. What makes the album singular and downright rousing is that all that longing is couched in joyful, uplifting, often show-stopping stick-to-your-ribs rock. This is no wallow, but a bouncy exclamation of living on that edge of feeling, written and produced by artists who know that the highs and lows of life are inextricably linked. And Brand New Trash manages to concoct a sonic stew of tunes that give you all the high highs and the low lows you could ever need.

Brand New Trash has a powerful lineup of musicians on display, with brothers/co-writers Vince and Jimmy Dewald pulling all the themes together into a potent whole. The band maximizes every corner of their musical repertoire in this album, from Vince’s haunting, tinny piano overdubs to Ben Andrews’ stellar fiddle and guitar playing throughout. Drummer Brian Bakalian adds taste and fire to the songs that are soulfully glued together with trademark brother vocal harmonies and the dual guitars of Vince Dewald and Ben Andrews.

The down and dirty low-fi indie-rock-y title track that opens the album sets the eclectic tone, as Brand New Trash proceeds to ping pong around a century of Americana musical stylings on Right in Front of You, from shades of Neil Young on “Back to that Place” to the wonderful off-center 1950’s pop radio nostalgia of “That Dress.” The album’s rollicking centerpiece, “Great Plains” is a stirring tune that compares the heartbreak of merely living – and touring – to America’s wide-open spaces and would make midwestern stalwarts Wilco stand up and cheer. Pulling into the homestretch, Right in Front of You wraps things up with two songs that offer a perfect summation of the whole. “Keep on Driving,” a lament on the daily grind and that urge to flee is followed up with the vocal blast of “Wouldn’t Change a Thing,” a final note of wistful recognition that while the journey is often fraught, it’s way cooler to rage against the dying of the light than to succumb to the darkness.