An intake of breath is the first sound you hear on David Franklin Courtright’s debut album, Brutal Tenderness, and you’d better take a deep breath of your own – for 35 minutes, the LA-based singer-songwriter will confront you with all his vulnerability, raw and unvarnished, as he searches for inner peace while exploring his queer identity and the meaning of love and loss.
Nearly a decade in the making and recorded over three continents, Brutal Tenderness, whose title is taken from a Frank O’Hara poem, finds Courtright mostly stripping everything back to his own voice, supported by sparse accompaniment. Unlike the loop-based eponymous album he released under the moniker Suno Deko back in 2017, this first project under his given name offers minimalist piano, sweeping strings, and some ambient, electronic flourishes. Plus plenty of tension, which the album title itself nods to, addressing both the unyielding and the soft parts in Courtright, and how they interact.
After the first listen it’s tempting to conclude that ‘brutal’ wins out. Not only does Courtright not shy away from bleakness, songs like opener “my first love” are filled with fear and insecurity. “Close your door to me / I don’t want you to see me” he sings, his voice reminiscent of Perfume Genius at his most desperate, and things get darker still on the aptly titled, haunting “like my wild woe”. “There’s a sadness ripening in me / Blossoming flower of my envy”, the first lines go, and as the track unfolds it seems as if Courtright is not content to simply pour that sadness on the listener: towards the end, after a piano solo that offers some respite, he unsettles you with sound effects that can only have been created by a choir of ghosts doing a spooky rendition of a Gregorian chant.
Everything is not lost, however, because the sadness contains plenty of beauty too. Whenever strings adorn the songs, which is often, they not only add emotional depth but also bring with them some light that shines through the gloom, as on “your kiss is something” and the first of two instrumental intermezzos, “devouring god”. But sometimes singing to a simple tune played on an acoustic guitar will do just nicely: on “boy”, Courtright needs no other instruments to express the anxiety one feels at the beginning of a relationship. Indeed, adding a drum machine or clapping sound effects which work elsewhere would only weaken the melancholy grace.
Similarly, Courtright choose his collaborators carefully, making sure they add just the right touches without ever slipping into excess or stealing the limelight. Julianna Barwick’s voice is like a ghostly shimmer on “feels”, while Angel Olsen’s background vocals help the already cathartic ending of album closer “in a tangerine light” soar up to heaven.
“Even a garden of love can wilt in the dark”, Courtright captures on “in a garden of love” the heartbreaking yet simple truth that love, like anything living, needs tending to. Yet Brutal Tenderness shows that you can find grace in the shadowy space where sadness and hope coexist – if you have the courage to approach it with honesty, laying your life bare as you do. Courtright does and he invites you to reckon with the brutal tenderness of your own.
David Franklin Courtright: Brutal Tenderness – Released 8 August 2025 (TODO)
a tangerine light” David Franklin Courtright
