After scoring movies about genocide, rape and murder, you can’t blame Paul Brill for wanting a change of pace. Breezy, his first solo album since 2006’s brooding Harpooner, is about as far away as you can get. It’s a cool glass of sunny summer pop, complete with euphonium, beatbox, oboe, pedal steel, bass clarinet and found percussion. The production overflows with crazy ideas, almost all successful, from the faux-Bollywood “Kissing Cousins” to the rhumba-and-roll “How High the Fishes,” the bossa reinvention of “S’Wonderful,” and the ringing guitars of “Sunny Guy,” which opens and closes the album.

“A cool glass of summer pop… smartly layered beneath these ridiculously smooth surfaces, making the dissonance that much more satisfying.”

There’s pain, too, mostly tragicomic (“After the slumber and sickness take hold, just lay me down in the sand/Let the water’s salt burn my skin off and scorching sun bleach my bones,” he sings, dictating his last will to a chorus of “la-la-la”s), but it’s smartly layered beneath these ridiculously smooth surfaces, making the dissonance that much more satisfying.
~ Kenny Berkowitz/Magnet Magazine