By Paul T. Mueller
“I’m getting used to living alone,” Eliot Bronson sings on the title track of his new album, Empty Spaces. “I’m getting used to nobody there when I come home… I’m getting used to the empty spaces that you used to fill.”
And that’s one of the happier songs on this 10-song collection.
Empty Spaces is one fine breakup album – written, as Bronson says, as therapy in the wake of painful breakup and a move to a new city. It’s got everything one would expect – sadness, confusion, bitterness, resignation – and, of course, emptiness. One could easily imagine most of these songs on breakup mixtapes, if that’s still a thing. The album is also a pretty good metaphor for the times we’re living in, as we navigate the transition between the world we used to know and the new, harsher reality we find ourselves in.
Several albums into a solo career, Bronson is only getting better as a writer. Around every corner here is another skillful turn of phrase to capture experience and emotion. “Don’t give me words, words can confuse,” pleads the weary narrator of “Let Me Go.” “Words can conceal the weapons we choose.” Confusion and frustration fuel “Good for You”: “If it’s so good for you, why aren’t you kinder? If it’s so good for you, why don’t you step lighter?” And in “Montana,” a sweetly sung bit of misplaced hostility, Bronson vents his rage on a proxy instead of his real target: “Your mountains in the night/Look like the edges of a knife that cut me… You took her away from me, and how could I ever compete with what you’ve got?” In “Gone,” the album’s bleak closer, he sings, “I listen to the rain play on the leaves/Like seconds ticking away, tiny thieves,” accompanied by twangy guitars and a lonely-sounding harmonica.
Empty Spaces encompasses a range of musical genres. “Visitor” is introspective singer-songwriter pop, while “Good for You” has a glossier feel. There’s a little country in “Good for You” and “She Loves the Mountains,” and “With Somebody” is packed with ’80s-style guitars and drums. The title track is a lovely, timeless pop song, full of sweet melody and catchy hooks, layered vocals and understated playing.
The album is also a showcase for Bronson’s talent for composition and arrangement. He shares credit for the project’s atmospheric production with bandmate Will Robertson, who also plays guitars, keyboards and bass. Other contributors included Bret Hartley (guitars), Colin Agnew (percussion), Marla Feeney (violin), Andrew Colella (viola), and Prisca Strothers (harmony vocals).
Bronson has been doing weekly livestreamed shows for the past few months, and for the most part they’ve been lively and upbeat – not surprising from a guy who last year came up with a funny novelty song based on that viral tweet about “30-50 feral hogs.” That he’s written and released an album’s worth of downbeat songs speaks to his skill as a writer, as well as his willingness to bare the darker side of his soul. It’s been said that artists turn pain into art, and Eliot Bronson has certainly done that with Empty Spaces.