Brette Irish – “Things You Keep” & “Kinda Sunny”

Brette Irish – “Things You Keep” & “Kinda Sunny”

Brette Irish fronts the Portland indie-pop band No Aloha and she also puts out music under her own name. Last year, she released a charming solo collection called Capital Cities, full of sweet-and-sour tinged songs, which is being reissued on tape. She has another full-length album of her own coming later this year, as well as a new album with No Aloha, but this week she’s putting out a 7″ that strips everything back and just highlights her incredibly strong songwriting.

It features two new songs — one, “Things You Keep,” that was left off Capital Cities, and the other, “Kinda Sunny,” an early version of a song that’ll appear on the next No Aloha album. Both of them are quite different, the former ping-ponging between rubbery synths and reverby guitar and the latter simply acoustic, but they both have a sharp point of view. The latter feels especially spacious, an air of hanging tension: “Riding in your car/ The wonder’s quietly leaving/ Stealing all the lights/ I’m gonna tell you soon.”

Listen to both of them below.

The Things You Keep 7″ is out 4/11 via Good Cheer Records. Pre-order it, alongside the Capital Cities tape reissue, here.

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