Travels With Brindle points her indie-pop compass towards ‘Rudolph’s Ranch’
The lo-fi ukulele project from Chelsea Spear decks the melancholic halls with a sad Christmas bop streaming Friday, November 4
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Travels With Brindle’s debut album ‘Notes From Undergrad’ set for 2023 release
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Photo Credit: Susan Margot Ecker
CAMBRIDGE, MA [November 4, 2022] – This holiday season, Travels With Brindle is eager to take us up to “Rudolph’s Ranch.” The lo-fi ukulele indie-pop project from Cambridge songwriter Chelsea Spear concludes its 2022 sad-core singles series with its first-ever Christmas song, an allegory set against the biggest holiday of the year, set for streaming release on Friday, November 4. In keeping with the spirit of the holidays, proceeds from sales of the single will be donated to Bread of Life Kitchen in Malden.
“Rudolph’s Ranch” arrives complete with single artwork inspired by the Little Golden Book children’s series [see more on that below!] and a music video directed by the comedian/filmmaker duo Emily Hulme and Peter Sikosky, filmed in the couple’s Chongqing district of China. The track is released on November’s Bandcamp Friday with a pair of appropriate b-sides: A cover of Big Star’s “Jesus Christ,” and a Travels With Brindle original called “Sister Cities.”
The unveiling of “Rudolph’s Ranch” closes out Travels With Brindle’s 2022 singles series – which began over the summer with “Ivan” and strummed through the fall with sad-core standouts “Linden Street” and “Something’s Wrong” – and reveals another track from her Notes From Undergrad album, due out in early 2023.
And like the previous singles, and the rest of the forthcoming album, “Rudolph’s Ranch” takes inspiration from Elif Batuman's 2017 novel The Idiot, which takes place over the protagonist Selin's freshman year at Harvard University in Cambridge, not too far where Spear once cut her musical teeth as a busker. It retains Travels With Brindle’s uncanny knack for musical melancholy, and now she takes her stripped-down and heartfelt sounds from the brick and asphalt streets of Cambridge to the frozen snow-covered corridors of the North Pole.
“In The Idiot, Selin reads an Intro To Russian text called ‘Nina in Siberia’ that foreshadows some of the events that happen later in the book,” Spears says. “I got a prompt to write a song about a place from an online songwriting group called Theme Music and I decided to write a song inspired by those passages in The Idiot. The title of the song came from an observation my sweetheart made; when I complained to him that most reindeer farms were named for their towns, he said ‘you’d think at least one would be called Rudolph's Ranch’. And thus a song was born.”
Taking cues from “Blue Christmas” and Rudolph’s other song about his bright red shiny nose and applying the Travels With Brindle songwriting treatment, which has drawn recent comparisons to the likes of Magnetic Fields and Belle And Sebastian and well as the jangle-pop stylings of ‘80s college rock, “Rudolph’s Ranch” finds Spear breaking out of her comfort zone, providing vocals while playing the banjolele. The track features Joel Edinberg on drums and standup bass; it was recorded by Edinberg in his attic, and was mastered by Josh Cohen.
“This was the second song I wrote for the project, when I decided to write an album inspired by The Idiot,” Spear admits. “I thought I wanted to write a bunch of songs that sounded like ‘Ivan’ and I knew this one had to stand out and show the listeners it wasn't part of the world of the rest of the album. I also knew I wanted it to be a sad Christmas bop.”
And similar to how prior single “Something’s Wrong” took shape after a challenge from online songwriting composition Song Fight!, “Rudolph’s Ranch” was born from another songwriter prompt.
“Another online songwriting group had a prompt that we needed to use the I-iii7-vi turnaround, and the seventh chords have a jazzy sound that reminds me of Christmas,” Spear adds. “I’m playing a plucked strum that has a rhythm like you're walking through mud in heavy boots. It was important to me that the sound of the song extended the story in the lyrics. I was working within a lot of constraints and I tried to focus on what the day-to-day life of this character was like… I wanted it to stand out a bit from the other songs I’ve released so far, so listeners know it's a story within a story.”
Beyond its lyrical sentiment, that story is also unwrapped via the “Rudolph's Ranch” music video directed by Hulme and Sikosky, which hits YouTube on release day. Spear discovered the pair's talents while scrolling Reddit, and connected with their experiences as American expats in Chonqing.
“I was drawn to the observational humor and the striking visuals of everyday life in China,” Spear notes, “and their experiences as outsiders in a new country rhymed with the themes I was exploring in ‘Rudolph's Ranch’. I emailed them and we jumped on a Zoom call, where they told me about the winter holidays in China and I explained my vague idea for the video. A few days later, Emily sent me a treatment that would be inspired by Ringo's lonely walk in A Hard Day’s Night, and their vision was true to my song but also came from their experiences. Getting progress updates and screenshots from Emily and Peter has been like opening a big Christmas stocking. I’m excited to show you what's under the tree.”
Either via the stream or the video, Spear hopes the song resonates with an audience who are eager to bring in new Christmas songs to mix in with the trusted classics. And of course, she’s well-aware that when we’re not visiting our respective town centers watching the red, green, and gold lights turn bright, a lot of us also spend a decent amount of the holiday season plumped down on the couch watching cable movies.
“I’m hoping to play ‘Rudolph’s Ranch’ at a few Christmas tree lightings this year,” she says. “And I would love to place this in a Hallmark movie, if anyone has any leads…”
Media Contact: Please direct all press inquiries to Travels With Brindle at travelswithbrindle@gmail.com or Michael Marotta at michael@publisist.co.
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‘Rudolph’s Ranch’ production credits:
Chelsea Spear: Vocals, ukulele, banjolele
Joel Edinberg: Drums, stand-up bass
Mixed by Christian DeKnatel
Mastered by Josh Cohen
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‘Rudolph’s Ranch’ single artwork:
Art Credit: Photo by Chelsea Spear; design by Chance Brown
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Travels with Brindle on the ‘Rudolph’s Ranch’ artwork:
As I was releasing these singles this year, I made the decision to use cover art that was designed to look like iconic book cover graphic art and children's toys. I had several reasons for working with these elements. Because the album these singles come from is inspired by a novel, I wanted to use something that played up the literary connections, but saying I was making an album inspired by a book felt pretentious. I wanted to balance my bookish inspiration with something that would deflate my pretensions. I was also inspired by the use of toys and miniatures in Sandi Tan's documentary Shirkers and wanted to play with that iconography in my own work.
By the time “Rudolph's Ranch” was ready for release, I had incorporated a Tomy Tutor Toy Computer on the cover of “Ivan” (because percussionist Hilary Lahan played a toy typewriter on the track); a Lego diorama for the cover of “Linden Street”, which was laid out to look like one of Lorraine Louie's 1980s Vintage Contemporaries novels; and a photo of an American Girl doll with a letter for the cover of “Something's Wrong”, which was inspired by the NYRB Classics series. I knew the sleeve art for “Rudolph's Ranch” was going to look like a Little Golden Book, since the song is allegorical and since Christmas is a children's holiday, and decided to use Playmobil because I hadn't worked with that on any of the other covers.
One of my neighbors had a Playmobil set of Santa and the reindeer, and I draped a few pieces of blue felt around my living room and took some pictures on my phone that I sent to my frequent collaborator Chance Brown. Chance and I have worked on all the sleeve art for these singles, and when I described to him how I wanted this to look, he sent me back a mockup of a sleeve that looked like a Little Golden Book. I couldn't stop smiling when he sent me that image – it made me excited for Christmas, and excited to share “Rudolph” with you.
So, here it is, the fourth and final song from Notes from Undergrad. I hope you love what you've seen and heard so far, and I'll see you next spring.
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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. Currently Spear is recording her first full album of original songs, led by a well-received series of 2022 singles that includes “Ivan,” “Linden Street,” and “Something’s Wrong.”
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‘Rudolph’s Ranch’ video screengrabs:
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Media praise for Travels With Brindle:
The music of Travels With Brindle can be heard on Banks Radio Australia, BumbleBee Radio, Enigma Magazine, Everything You Know Is Wrong (Salem State WMWM), Good Music Radio UK, 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, Sunshine Music iRadio, Turn Up The Volume, and other fine shows, stations and platforms.
“Melancholic mellowness” – Turn Up The Volume
“‘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 creates harmonies that balances 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
“[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
“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
“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@publisist.co or travelswithbrindle@gmail.com
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