Travels With Brindle confronts an indie-pop realization on ‘Switching Tracks’
The new single from Chelsea Spear’s lo-fi ukulele-pop project pulls into the station on Friday, May 5
Travels With Brindle’s debut album ‘Notes From Undergrad’ set for June 2 release
Listen to Travels With Brindle: Bandcamp // YouTube // Spotify
‘Chelsea Spear continues to get better with each release.’ – Jersey Beat
Photo Credit: Jen Vesp
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CAMBRIDGE, MA [May 5, 2023] – There’s usually a moment in every relationship, or would-be relationship, when a person comes to a certain realization. And often, that realization is quickly followed by a choice: Do they stay the course, or do they get off at the next proverbial station. That’s at play in “Switching Tracks,” the new single from Travels With Brindle, the Cambridge-based lo-fi ukulele indie-pop project from singer-songwriter Chelsea Spear, set for streaming release on Friday, May 5.
“Switching Tracks” is the fifth single to be featured on Travels With Brindle’s forthcoming debut album, Notes From Undergrad, out June 2. The record was made possible in part by a $5,000 COVID relief grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, one of 3,000 awarded to artists from across the commonwealth. Spear will air out this new composition, and others from the record, at Union Music in Worcester on May 13, and the official Notes From Undergrad album unveiling party goes down – appropriately enough – at the Somerville Public Library on June 1, the eve of the album release.
And it should sound as lively and impactful in a public forum as it does on the streams. With its upbeat demeanor and melancholic bounce, “Switching Tracks” furthers the central themes of the album, which takes inspiration from Elif Batuman's 2017 novel The Idiot. The book takes place over the protagonist Selin's freshman year at Harvard University, not too far from where Spear once cut her musical teeth as a busker. And like previous singles “Ivan,” “Linden Street,” “Something’s Wrong,” and last holiday season’s “Rudolph’s Ranch,” Spear’s latest indie-pop entry not only continues to illustrate her knack for melody and songwriting, but also pulls back the curtain on the themes of love, loss, and longing that glide through the record.
“‘Switching Tracks’ is about the moment you cross paths with a crush and realize they’re not as great as you thought they were, and that realization frees you,” Spear says. “It’s inspired by a moment at the end of The Idiot when Selin and Ivan finally talk about her feelings for him and his inability to reciprocate them. I also experienced two friend break-ups in a three-year period, so a lot of the fresh pain comes from not being able to say some of the things I really wanted to say to them.”
Spear adds: “I think ‘Switching Tracks’ speaks to the disillusionment that can accompany the end of a friendship or a crush. The mood is very ‘I was into that?’ It’s releasing that longing into the world, but not without a sense of disappointment.”
What developed musically for Spear through that process and realization, not to mention the immediate aftermath of moving on and the disillusionment that often follows, falls somewhere between Pleased to Meet Me-era Replacements and something one may hear in the background of The Adventures of Pete & Pete. “Switching Tracks,” beyond its infectious melody and heart-on-sleeve vulnerability, showcases the wider sonic scope of Notes From Undergrad’s tracklist. It features Spear on vocals and ukulele (recorded at home, DIY-style in her bedroom closet), with brass recruited via Reddit: Donovan Bankhead on trombone, and Belinda Bankhead and Makkonen Shivers on trumpet. It was mixed by Christian DeKnatel and mastered by Joel Edinberg.
“When I look back at the first few singles from the album, it feels like the songs have been slower and moodier,” Spear admits. “‘Switching Tracks’ represents the poppier side of the album. Since I arranged the horns and wrote the ukulele riff at the top of the song, I hope it shows my range as a songwriter and arranger as well!”
As with most Travels With Brindle compositions, the songwriting inspiration is pulled from a host of source material – from music to literature to film – before Spear filters it through her sharpened pop lens, which borrows as much from girl-groups of yesterday to more recent, left-of-center jangle-pop and college-rock, as she earns comparisons to the likes of Magnetic Fields and Belle And Sebastian – or, as her bio states, as if “Lesley Gore went on a date with They Might Be Giants.”
On “Switching Tracks,” the I-V-ii-V7 chord progression was born after she read Chris O’Leary’s essay on The Jamies on his 64 Quartets project. From there, she worked with a collaborator on editing and refining the song, focusing the lyrics to the two characters in the café car. That, in turn, inspired the “Switching Tracks” artwork, which furthers the lost-innocence theme of the song through a visual depicting a model train layout at the Wenham Museum in Wenham, Massachusetts, located north of Boston. The museum is where Spear had her ninth birthday party, and the space remains a special one for her personally.
But it also furthers a visual theme she established last year as her singles series came to fruition: “Ivan’ was inspired by Washington Square Press; “Linden Street” by Vintage Contemporaries; “Something’s Wrong” by NYRB Books, and “Rudolph’s Ranch” by Little Golden Books. Here’s a design lifted off the shelves from a late-era Penguin paperback, with a photo snapped by Spear herself and a design crafted by Chance Brown.
“The sleeve art for the previous singles used toys to recreate the look of different well-regarded book publishers,” Spear notes. “I wanted to communicate the literary inspiration for these songs but also show I didn’t take myself too seriously. Since the sleeve art for Notes From Undergrad – to be unveiled soon! – is designed to look like an early Penguin paperback, I thought I’d go with a later Penguin design template for the ‘Switching Tracks’ cover. I had my ninth birthday party at the Wenham Museum and remembered that they had a few model train layouts in their collection, so I took a day trip to the North Shore to look at the trains; once I saw the couple not looking at one another, I knew I had the subjects for my sleeve art.”
What comes next, in the song and at that station, is perhaps up to choice.
Media Contact: Please direct all press inquiries to Michael Marotta at michael@knyvet.com and reach Travels With Brindle directly at travelswithbrindle@gmail.com.
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‘Switching Tracks’ production credits:
Written and recorded by Chelsea Spear
Mixed by Christian DeKnatel
Mastered by Joel Edinberg
Ukulele, vox: Chelsea Spear
Trombone: Donovan Bankhead
Trumpets: Belinda Bankhead, Makkonen Shivers
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‘Switching Tracks’ single artwork:
Art Credit: Photo by Chelsea Spear; design by Chance Brown
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Travels With Brindle short bio:
Chelsea Spear has been a music critic, a show promoter, a college radio host, and a video director… but all she really wanted to do was start a band. Not long after learning to play the ukulele, she formed the bedroom recording project Travels With Brindle. Her melodic original songs and wry, poignant lyrics have attracted a growing audience at open mics and busking pitches in the Greater Boston area. Spear is inspired by lo-fi songwriters and jangle pop acts of the 1980s and ‘90s, and her work has been compared to the Marine Girls, the Raincoats, Courtney Barnett, and Liz Phair. In June 2023, Travels With Brindle releases its debut album, Notes From Undergrad, led by a string of well-received singles, including “Ivan,” “Linden Street,” and “Something’s Wrong.”
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Media praise for Travels With Brindle:
The music of Travels With Brindle can be heard on Banks Radio Australia, Blood Makes Noise, BumbleBee Radio, CTRL Plus Space, Enigma Magazine, Everything You Know Is Wrong (Salem State WMWM), Good Music Radio UK, Hash Brand New, Hump Day News, If It’s Too Loud, I’m Music Magazine, Indie Radio YFM, Jersey Beat, Lonely Oak Radio, Mad Wasp Radio, Marc’s Alt Rock Playground (Mark Skin Radio), Original Music Showcase (Mark Skin Radio), Rock N Roll Fables, Spill Magazine, Sunshine Music iRadio, The Bad Copy, Turn Up The Volume, and other fine shows, stations and platforms.
“Melancholic mellowness.” – Turn Up The Volume
“[Linden Street’ is] as glorious and refreshing as the first crisp, autumn morning… Spear’s brand of melancholy exposes a raw humanity in a poignant and brave manner… [it’s] the closest Spear has come to achieving perfection.” – Jersey Beat
“Travels With Brindle creates harmonies that balance on the line of folk and indie-rock singer/songwriter, an artist loaded with stories to share... 'Linden Street' sets the intriguing tone and curiosity to hear what the next single of this trilogy will bring.” – I’m Music Magazine
“Power-pop ukulele — you can't go wrong with this. This is great stuff!” — Marc Hurwitz, host of Marc’s Alt-Rock Playground on Mark Skin Radio
“‘Something's Wrong’ is going to immediately remind you of The Magnetic Fields, especially Claudia Gonson's songs. It has that stripped down quality along with a storytelling feel to it. It's almost even more theatrical than you would get with The Magnetic Fields despite having bare instrumentation. A lyric like ‘I read his emails by the glow of the Coke machine’ just sets a mood completely. ‘Something's Wrong’ is going to be nearly impossible to resist for many of us.” – If It’s Too Loud
“Travels With Brindle is typically known as a busking project, but ‘Linden Street’ is more alt-pop based than anything you've heard on the streets. It's a fun song that helps cement Spear as an artist you're going to want to watch out for.” – If It’s Too Loud
“Once a busker on the streets of Boston, Chelsea Spear is now performing in venues, and she’s not afraid to get a little spooky.” – The Lynn Item
“The [‘I Want U’] video, directed by Vanessa Mark and shot in Central and Harvard squares, is inspired by Spear’s experiences busking – ‘You run into a lot of interesting people, folks who maybe need a therapist as well as people who are very enthusiastic about music,’ she says – and proves that things go more smoothly with a dinosaur by your side.” – Cambridge Day
“Chelsea Spear makes her ukulele rock throughout a collection of six poignant tracks.” – Jersey Beat
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Press Contact: michael@knyvet.com
Artist Contact: travelswithbrindle@gmail.com
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