Pennan Brae

Thick and hard-hitting, there’s a groove in “Pay Dirt” that wants to get our attention, and it’s not stopping at anything in seeing its mission completed this summer. Dropping garage rock-style thrills on us with ease, Pennan Brae offers up another bludgeoning beat fit for fans of overdriven musicality everywhere in his latest single and its lyric video, both of which are generating a healthy amount of buzz for his brand this summer. Brae earns every bit of it here, issuing a formidable rock tune that pays tribute to the past without getting too retrospective from a compositional point of view. 

WEBSITE: https://pennanbrae.com/ 

The vocal imparts a slick tonality to the mix here that is almost synthy when placed side by side with the other melodic components, but I think this element was made purposely robotic as to emphasize the muscularity of the guitars. Don’t get me wrong - there’s nothing inauthentic about the construction of this single, but you’d have to be crazy to ignore the dedicated contrast between the voice in the backdrop and the beefy fretwork commanding over everything happening up front. It showcases how much heat Brae is putting into the strings, which is more than I can say for some of his mainstream counterparts this season. 

A veteran rock singer/songwriter who is able to do just about whatever he wants in the studio by now, Pennan Brae delivers the goods once again in this most recent effort and proves that he has more than enough gas left in the tank to take on the 2020s with swagger. Rock has gone through a tumultuous couple of decades, but as long as there are independent artists like this one keeping its core ethics alive in our modern times, we can rest assured knowing the genre isn’t disappearing from the world anytime soon. 

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Trace Whittaker

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

7/2020