Ball of Wax 66 Songs: Bryan Nicolas Brophy – “Watch the World”

As I hope is obvious by now, I am a fan of all kinds of strange and weird and adventurous music/sound: Weird time signatures; drone; unusual or homemade instruments; noisy, lo-fi recordings, I love it all. That said, I’m also still a sucker for a good old acoustic guitar and vocal tune, beautifully played and sung, which is what our new friend Bryan Nicolas Brophy has brought us. “Watch the World” is not exactly a light-hearted jaunt (I’ll give you one guess what word comes after “Watch the World” in the chorus), and Bryan’s vocal and guitar composition and performance bring an appropriate gravity to the content. (Given the space travel theme, maybe ‘gravity’ wasn’t the best word choice there, but you know what I mean.) Sometimes one wants to temper heavy lyrical content with upbeat music (as we have heard on this very volume), and sometimes you just gotta let the darkness have its day. That seems to have been Bryan’s approach here, and, while it doesn’t make for fun listening, the result is a beautifully bleak song that I wouldn’t want to hear any other way.