Fitzsimon and Brogan release Big Blue World

Fitzsimon and Brogan release Big Blue World

URL: https://www.fitzsimonandbrogan.com/

The evolution of modern pop music is a rather fascinating story to look upon, especially when you consider how short of a time that we’ve had recorded music available to we, the masses. In just a hundred years we’ve seen hundreds of thousands of artists emerge from communities spanning continents, each offering a different flavor of culture to bring to people unfamiliar with its sophisticated detail. The United Kingdom has been responsible for administering some of the most time honored pieces of humanity’s collective songbook, and in 2018, the London, England based Fitzsimon and Brogan are keeping the tradition alive with their latest record, Big Blue World, a swaggeringly fun record that cultivates some of the most beloved traits of pop music and yields a product that is not only easy to relate to but is stylistically different from anything else that’s on the market today. If you’ve been waiting for an album that will change the course of your tastes heading into the 2020’s, this is quite likely the LP that will do the trick.

Broken into thirteen storytelling tracks that each showcase a different aspect of songwriter and guitarist Neil Fitzsimon and multi-instrumentalist and lead singer Bee Brogan’s futuristic interpretation of pop/rock, Big Blue World doesn’t feature the stop-start dynamic that a lot of casual music fans have come to heavily associate with contemporary alternative rock. Rather than recreating the song structures of the Pixies, Fitzsimon and Brogan take a more Dadaist inspired approach to their art form, and let freeform arrangements illustrate a sumptuous portrait of colorful melodies and broken harmonies that allude to free jazz influences. One thing I would like to see them do on their future records would be to put more of a focus on Brogan’s ominous vocal track, which radiates a sense of danger as we encounter every twist and turn thatBig Blue World takes us on. Her singing is unquestionably one of the finer points on the record, although her skillset is matched equally by Fitzsimon’s carefully synchronized guitar riffage. While I wouldn’t go as far as to call this a straight up rock album, there’s definitely a hint of Iggy Pop’s primal energy that carries over from song to song here.

When we honestly analyze pop in the digital age, we can’t help but feel both optimistic about the possibilities that this massive pool of new artists will produce and yet a little disappointed that the exclusivity of going pro is starting to fade. Although it’s a great development for so many burgeoning young talents to get out of the studio and into our stereos these days, it also makes for a lot more garbage to have to sort through to find treasures like Big Blue World. Fitzsimon and Brogan are showing us that it’s still worth the effort to look for gems amidst the filler though, and it would be criminal not to celebrate their endearing kinship with the teachings of pop music’s most hallowed and legendary figures.

TWITTER: https://twitter.com/BroganAnd

Michael Rand