Black Belt Eagle Scout - At The Party With My Brown Friends

Apparently, the first album by Black Belt Eagle Scout (aka Katherine Paul) was filled with “squalling guitar anthems.” But this new record, At the Party with My Brown Friends, floats on dreamy and acoustic melodies.

A simple guitar introduces “At the Party,” while the vocals soar. The song yearns to know “How is it real?” Yes, indeed, this is soul-searching stuff, and the song is a drum infused (with a few nice keyboards) matrix of webbed beauty. It’s ephemeral with a very tangible touch.  

The album continues to pulse with soft blood. “The Heart Dreams” is, again, driven with deep pace, while the vocals urge for the wisdom of the dreamy heart. This is passion personified. “Going to the Beach with Haley” is acoustic quiet. It catches a hushed moment that is elevated to near sonic sainthood with a nice electric guitar bit.

Camus wrote in The Stranger that “a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.”

This album is about all the stuff of a day that could fill one hundred years of thought. “Real Lovin” is slow and (almost) prayerful in its intense moment of susurrated passion. This exits the orbit of pop music, and it paints in the realms of art. “Run to Ya” blossoms like a big flower or a newly inflated universe. It’s an overwhelming and hypnotic canvas.

There are more great songs. “I Said I Wouldn’t Write This Song” fires with an upbeat electric guitar, drum, and vocal, and then an electric guitar, once again, ascends to the heavens. Ah, “Scorpio Moon” discovers an Eastern vibe. This one slow-dances with the stars.  And then things find an even slower beauty with (the wonderfully titled) “Half Colored Hair.” The tune sings of the “light breaking” moments that contain enough beauty for Camus and a hundred years.

The final song, “You’re Me and I’m You,” is a song for her mother, and, of course, anyone’s mother, who will always just be “mom.” An acoustic guitar dances in this tune. Quite rightly so. It’s a beautiful circle of a song that sends love right back to its beginning. Nice songs in any universe somehow manage to do that.

This is a record of diaphanous grace that has nothing to do the sentiment of sappy greeting cards. This one explores the ever-expanding universe, and then it returns to the quiet nest of humanity. It gulps air. This is clever chess-move music. It doesn’t scream anything. It simply sings with the blood rich pulse of better songs sung by better angels.