Michelle Schrotz (photograph by David Wright)

I'm really excited about this new album for a lot of reasons.  It's the first time that we've done everything on our own (production and recording wise) and honestly the end product exceeded my expectations.  I'm proud of what we were able to accomplish and I'm also excited about what we've learned and what the future holds for us in terms of releasing new music (hey maybe the next full length album won't be a 10 year wait! :)   This album is very diverse, there is something for a wide range of music listeners in this collection of songs.  There are some quiet and beautiful moments and also heavy moments with big guitars, drums and bass. 

One of my favorite songs on this album is "Mystery".  Starting off with a big guitar groove, and then there are these fun "The Edge" like guitar slides, the speaking parts during the verses (that we referred to as the "cockpit chatter" like what you'd hear the pilots say during your last flight) and ending with a "gospel" choir, it's such a fun little song.  It's also the second time in our 20 year band history that my Dad wrote the lyrics for us!  He writes a lot of lyrics, poems, stories, etc., but the lyrics for this song seemed to fit perfectly with the music and I love how it turned out.  (If anyone is wondering what the other song was that he contributed lyrics for, it was "New Beginning" from the "Searching for the Sun" album.)   

Another favorite of mine is "Race to the End" where for the first time I sang a duet with Rain Irving who I also have had the pleasure of singing with in While Heaven Wept.  I knew I wanted to sing with Rain on the album and had debated for a long time which song seemed right.  I'm glad "Race" ended up being the winner because I think it was the perfect song and what he added to it was amazing.  I love singing with his "big" voice. I think the tone of our voices are actually very similar but his voice is so big and powerful and mine is much softer and yet somehow I don't think we off set each other, it works.  I'm really glad we were able to work together on this one.  

There are a lot of song highlights for me on this new album and we have a lot more to come.  As we started working on "the calm | the storm" we had about 30 songs and ended up with 10. We are working on the next batch of songs now and seeing which ones will make the final cut for the next release. Looking forward to getting out there and playing more live shows too.  THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us over the years and we hope to see you at a show soon!  <3

Suvo Sur (photograph by David Wright)

Perhaps my favorite track on TCTS is Feel the Rain. In the 20+ years Brave has been in existence, FTR is really one of the first songs that allowed us to explore various textures and structures on the fly without any of the annoying constraints of tight deadlines or a ticking studio clock that bleeds our funds dry. So we were really able to push some boundaries with this one. I'm looking forward to keeping that creative drive strong and challenge ourselves (and the listeners) with an impending shit-ton of new immersive soundscapes, textures, and fresh sonic environments in future releases.