album review: pete krebs' "brigadier"

Best remembered for sharing an LP with the late & great Elliott Smith, Pete Krebs has amassed a surprising number of fans and musical credentials over the years. After fronting Hazel with Jody Bleyle of Team Dresch in the early 1990s, Krebs put out a number of solo folk albums on Cavity Search Records. "Brigadier" was the first of these records, put out in 1995, and perhaps the best.


Most singer-songwriters shove their feelings into a listener's face via the album-long narrative, packing their angst into a series of dull, labored accounts of romances gone wrong and rainy nights in empty coffee bars. Pete Krebs doesn't do that. Though the songs on the album are unmistakably meant to be linked together, they are linked with subtle agility that lets them dodge cliche status; "Brigadier" isn't a bad break-up album or a mid-life crisis album or even a dewey-eyed 'debut' album. But it is a story. From the quietly passionate first verse of "D Tune Drop" to the dark, harrowing climax of "Kiss," Krebs plays narrator, earnestly relating a series of reflections and thoughts that are half stream-of-consciousness, half self-deprecating joke. Metaphors are woven into personal memories, dialogues are woven into acerbic commentaries, and sarcasm is woven into sentimentality. Throughout, "Brigadier" is pain-stakingly honest without, miraculously, ever being vacuous or annoying.

While some are likely to notice that Krebs' whispery, suppressed vocals are reminescent of Elliott Smith (which they are, like it or not), he is very distinguishable from Smith (and the growing pool of Smith wannabes) in that he never deals in misery or caves to his more depressive impulses. After the somber "Orleans Parish" comes the twangy, upbeat "Truman;" after the anguished, battering "Bad Penny" comes the soothing "Mean Time." There is a sweet, almost pastoral quality to Krebs' work, in part because of the classical folk and country traditions that he borrows so heavily from. In this case, his derivation pays off: it makes what would otherwise be Just Another Indie-Rock Record become an absolutely beautiful folk record.

Sixteen years after its release, "Brigadier" still sounds fresh, a mark of its possible timelessness. And even when Krebs takes a turn for the calculatedly indie ("every bicycle looks like yours'" could only be a lyric penned for the not-yet out-of-diapers "Juno" generation), he's put more honesty into "Brigadier" than some musicians put into their entire discographies. With its understated brand of confessionalism, "Brigadier" is a success.

4.5/5