The intro of “Miracle” is like holding a magnifying glass up to local artist Stace Brandt and her band. You can hear the sharp inhale of breath that begins every hum. You can envision the quivering, vibrating string of the upright bass with each pluck, the low note lingering in mid-air. You can feel the wavering of Brandt’s soft vocals at the end of certain syllables. It’s the microscopic detail captured on the delicate recordings of pianist Nils Frahm, or the focus provided to listeners by the dancing visuals in Disney’s Fantasia to help us really listen to what we were hearing.
As the song progresses, we slowly step back and zoom out: Brandt adds in layers of sound with Jake Burchard’s drumming, Forrest Pettengill’s upright bass, and Justin Bartlett’s synths. The audible buildup is reflective of the recording process: “I wanted to keep the intro almost acapella, super ominous and spare, but hinting that something more is about to happen,” Brandt explains. “I was really intent on having a much lower and higher range of sounds, so we added two different synths—analog (a Moog Grandmother) and digital (an OP-1). We also added a shimmer of acoustic guitar leading into the refrain. It’s all the little things that made this song eventually come alive.”
The upcoming EP, Lucky Ones (set to release on March 2nd, with the help of a Club Passim Iguana Music Fund grant), explores a relationship Brandt had over the course of a couple of years. The first track, “Miracle,” marks the beginning of that relationship. “It’s inherently about how love can be an addiction. Being addicted to the way a person made you feel and having withdrawals and being driven mad by it,” Brandt says. Much of the EP references nighttime—a scene depicted in the gritty sketched album art, which features a singular, solitary street lamp lighting the dark of the night.
When I asked her to visualize the EP as a room, she responded: “It would probably look like a messy bedroom not unlike my own. ZOOM and PAN across the intricacies of an unmade bed, the creases of the sheets frozen in time. A bedroom that looks rushed out of.” Fitting, considering she began her music career writing songs in her bedroom up until her first year of college at the University of Vermont. It was there where she began sharing her music with others beyond her close friends.
“My second year of college I became more comfortable exploring and vocalizing my sexuality, and started dating women, and suddenly my songs were a lot more honest and free,” Brandt says. “People started responding to them more because I was more confident with myself.”
After her time in Burlington, Vermont, Brandt moved back to Boston where she met Forrest Pettengill, the bassist on this track, and a co-producer of Lucky Ones. Below, you can listen to the first track off the EP, and catch her live at the Lucky Ones release show at the Dorchester Art Project on Sunday, March 24.