David Franklin Courtright admits that there’s nothing insinuative about “Boy,” the second single from his upcoming debut, Brutal Tenderness.
“It’s a very gay song for obvious reasons—a breathy tenor singing about being nervous around boys,” he says. “Even though it’s more about romantic paralysis in a lot of ways, it’s also something I wanted to explore in everyone. Regardless of gender, we all have a bit of a nervous, eager boy in us.”
Available August 8 via Todo (the new imprint from former 4AD exec Simon Halliday), Brutal Tenderness is a revealing, stunningly serene artistic coming out for the Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, poet and (yes) baker. Raised in an inclusive church family in Atlanta, Courtright never knew any version of Christianity that didn’t embrace queer people. His Southern upbringing was equally open to all forms of music, from Appalachian folk to classic rock to hip hop.
As Suno Deko, Courtright toured Europe with Wye Oak and Angel Olsen. Written and recorded on three continents over eight years, Brutal Tenderness finds him stripping away the mystery and the insecurity that came with that moniker.
“I was living in India, just out of college and also the closet, and I wanted to distance my personal self from anything I made musically,” says Courtright of his Suno Deko period. “I didn’t want to be the singer/songwriter type. I wanted to make loop-based music in a way no one had ever heard before. I’m not sure if I did all that, but I did create a working process and a puzzle to figure out.”
These days, some of that puzzle has been solved. “I want to make music that takes someone on a journey—or gives them a language or a name for feelings they’ve had but have never been able to name,” says Courtright. “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy by Sarah McLachlan was the first record to really do that to me when I was about eight years old. That record is definitely a fairy godmother to this one.”
We’re proud to premiere David Franklin Courtright’s “Boy.”
—Hobart Rowland
