Two major events provide the backdrop to Tracy Bryant’s fourth solo album: his father’s death and the birth of his first child. While references to the former feature more prominently in the lyrics, it does not have the air of a sackcloth and ashes record. Musically, it took shape in the pandemic which brought Bryant’s European tour to promote his previous album, ‘Hush’, to a halt. Having previously been known for guitar-based tunes, back home he started working on new songs on the piano, using Arthur Russell and Vince Guaraldi as inspiration for the structures. The instrument was the source of both rhythm and melody. It proves to be an approach that suits Bryant with ‘The Well’ offering an impressive blend of traditional pop songs with krautrock, psychedelia, post-punk and indie.
Over jazz-inflected rhythms and a beguiling piano melody, ‘Cold Floor’ begins with the stark reflection, “it’s a long road to a small door you know / a farewell on a cold floor,” instantly creating images of a coffin disappearing at a funeral’s end. His reflections on there being less time than he thought will be familiar to anyone who has lost a parent suddenly. It cannot fail to stir thoughts about one’s own mortality. However, surprisingly, there is an equanimity to the song, an acceptance of our eventual destination and the track even ends with a whoop of delight. The road metaphor is revisited on ‘Famished’, albeit with greater optimism as he observes, “it’s not a long road if you plan it / it’s not a dark hole if you look up”, although some of that positivity derives from his baby (“the wave of joy each time I hear my Bo.”) Joo-Joo Ashworth’s guitar leads the song alongside another Bryant piano melody, again finding the ideal intersection between melancholy and beauty.
Lyrically, the album is at its bleakest on ‘Widow’ which sets his own heartbreak at his father’s death with distress at his mum becoming a widow. With economy it hints at what those who have been through the process will recognise of how your own thoughts have to be submerged within a supporting role. The song’s motorik momentum mirrors the busyness of administration that becomes a temporary escape from grief. In contrast, ‘Meet Me’ indulges in dreams of an afterlife with instructions to “meet me there / on a cloud somewhere.” With its rhythmic programming and synths that alternately twinkle and flare, it is a track that depends more on atmospherics than melody.
The title track matches staccato rhythms, a brooding mood and piano twirls, finding him “coiled up like a chain”, the well is the tears that are held back for so long before being unleashed, the grief that must eventually be manifested. On ‘Halfway’, he confronts the moment where everything is overturned – “I woke up not expecting everything that would change / I came only thinking that it’s another day / but now that I’ve seen death / often it’s trapped in my head.” I recognise in this my experience of receiving a phone call with the news that my father had suffered what proved to be a fatal heart attack. It leaves a lasting impression, life dividing into before and after the event. Musically, a chugging rhythm is matched to subdued but dramatic piano flourishes. ‘Danny’ is muted and mournful, a couple of times shifting to a waltz rhythm while the inclusion of strings adds extra emotional depth.
Earlier ‘Weight’, which appears second on the running list, proves to be an outlier with its motorik propulsion giving the track a sense of perpetual motion. The whirring synths place it somewhere between Neu at their most accessible and Air’s ‘Kelly Watch The Stars’ while the piano melody adds an appetising garnish.
The album is rounded off with ‘Easy Street’ which despite his protestations that this is where he now resides also has the suggestion that “something’s got to give” as the synths bubble and the piano offers a melancholic melody.
As is clear, there was plenty on ‘The Well’ with which I could identify but the loss of a loved one is something that most will eventually experience. However, someone who pays no attention to lyrics could still enjoy the album as its piano melodies offer an ideal blend of introspection and uplift that complement his understated voice. It is evidently a highly personal project for Bryant and proves to be his most fully realised.
Tracy Bryant: The Well – Out 22 May 2026 (Taxi Gauche Records)
Bryant – Cold Floor (Official Video)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
