Brijean

Brijean, the project of percussionist/singer-songwriter Brijean Murphy — the percussive heartbeat for live bands like Mitski, Poolside, and Toro y Moi — and multi-instrumentalist/producer Doug Stuart announce their new album Macro, out July 12th via Ghostly International, and share its lead single/visualizer “Workin’ On It.”  “Workin’ On It” finds Brijean at their lightest and free. The track initially started as a living room jam then “Doug played the two-layered basslines over a loop of bongos, congas and a drum machine and the rest felt like it happened in a dream,” explains Murphy.  While working late into the night and struggling with insomnia, she improvised her sleep-deprived lines, riffing on self-improvement and modern times, half-serious at first but something clicked in those small hours. Later she asked fans to send voice memos in exchange for art, and some of those got peppered into the soundbed. “That was a treat… Just getting to go through and hear all of these voices from around the world, an intimate and charming experience.” The track’s visualizer, directed by Bijan Berahimi, sees jump cuts of still photographs of the duo in tracksuits, complimenting the playful energy of the song.

Since their debut in 2019, Brijean has moved with ingenuity, fusing psych-pop abstraction with dancefloor sensibilities. Through the body and mind, rhythm and lyricism, they make sense of the worlds around and within; 2021’s Feelings celebrated self-reflection; 2022’s Angelo processed loss, coinciding with the duo’s first headlining tour, which doubled down on the material’s desire to move. Now, across the playful expanse of Macro, Brijean engages different sides of themselves, the paradox of being alive. They’ve leveled up to meet the complexities and harmonies of the human experience with their most dynamic songwriting yet. Colorful, collaborative, sophisticated, and deeply fun, the album animates a macrocosm with characters, moods, and points of view rooted in the notion that no feeling is final and the only way out is through.

Macro’s sequencing elicits an exploratory vibe with high-tempo peaks and breezy valleys in the psyche; astral drifts like “Euphoric Avenue” and “Roxy,” brush up against propulsive pop numbers like “Bang Bang Boom” and the breakbeat-bursts of “Breathe.” Brijean sees the record’s vast sonic spectrum in contrast to the expectations for their output — “we’re supposed to know the box that our art fits in, and then fully commit to it existing within that box,” adds Stuart. Take the closing pair of “Rollercoaster” and “Laura”; one a thrilling roller-disco anthem and the other a parade of heartfelt, flute-heavy indie-pop. Both are signature Brijean and offer an appropriate send-off; love, family, fantasy, pleasure, pain… the intention of Macro is not just to move through the ups and downs but to feel it all.