100 Bands in 100 Days Presented by Verity Credit Union — Day 63: Brandon Krebs

Please check out Verity Credit Union, our great partner in the 100 Bands in 100 Days local music showcase.

Music fans of the Pacific Northwest, get ready for our fourth annual year-end daily local music showcase, 100 Bands in 100 Days, where every day until December 31st, we’re showcasing a new band or artist you have to know about, presented by Verity Credit Union. Make sure you are checking the #100Bands100Days hashtag at Twitter on the daily to stay on top of all the bands featured and make sure to follow Verity on Twitter and NW_Music_Scene as well. Some days the featured act could be an established and locally-adored northwest-based musician and other times they could be a band with a small following that just hasn’t had their deserved time in the sun yet. Either way, we’re fairly confident you can come away from this daily segment with plenty of new favorites. Today’s featured artist is Brandon Krebs.

Back in May we reviewed Refuge in Exile, the latest full length album from Seattle songwriter/musician/producer Brandon Krebs. It’s a fantastic album worthy of another shout out and of course, another listen.

Here’s some of what we said about the EP in our review:

The lead track “Blurred Outer Edges” concerns identity. With his vocals jaded in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Julian Casablancas from The Strokes, Krebs notes “all of these characters that I play/ forget their lines and then slip away.” The edges of our being–that which sum up our external, observable identity” are not necessarily set. Especially in an itinerant life, the identity others are exposed to is variable. This blurring, then begins to eat away at our facades until the dissolution begins to reach the core of who we are. Ironically, our expeditions to go “find ourselves” can often result in more confusion.

On one of the album highlights, “Alarm Pheromones,” Krebs embodies numerous voices discussing the anxiety of technological proliferation in what is, more and more, becoming a surveillance state. He is “the blip on your screen/ the profile you try to delete, the black tape on your camera” and simultaneously the “house arrest you can’t escape.” Our social lives are all ready to be downloaded on a flash drive and thrown in an evidence locker. The final refrain “if you see something, say something” speaks to the world we live in; we are our own informers. The longings of the human condition demand both security and privacy; Krebs opines that we can’t have both. With the bombast of a spare 80’s back beat holding up synth laced melodies, Krebs unmasks the electric dystopia we are already living in.

In “This Old Line” Krebs zooms in closely on (presumably) himself in a confessional piece with some of his best lines on the album. As a writer, it’s those lines that make you say things like “this bastard…” because you wish you had written them. Speaking to a tendency to avoid the “boring” parts of life and relationships– the necessary negative space in between life events– Krebs disaffectedly croons: “I don’t know what all the drama means/ I just fast forward to the sex scenes.” In this particular story, his disenchanted frustration, is chipped away by his love interest spurring a headlong (though possible futile) run into abandon “with anchors tied to [their] legs.”