For the first time in years, the Brook And The Bluff decided to pull over. For almost 10 years, the Nashville-based quartet has taken a relentlessly methodical approach to bringing its soul-inflected, harmony-rich folk/rock to the people with tours every spring and fall. And it’s paid off in the form of viral hits like “Halfway Up” and “Everything Is Just A Mess.”
The band’s fifth album is the product of four road warriors getting reacquainted with everyday life (and perhaps even themselves) after a whirlwind decade that took them from the football-crazed campus of South Carolina’s Auburn University to venues across the country. There was a wedding, a divorce and tons of jamming in their Music City rehearsal space. And while the subject matter leans toward the introspective, Werewolf (Dualtone) finds the band in unrepentant ’70s mode. Aided by producer Micah Tawlks, they channeled their personal energy stores into cranking up the amps and having fun playing again—actually sitting together in a circle and tracking each song 10 times.
Here’s more from band frontman Joseph Settine.
—Hobart Rowland
1) “Werewolf”
“(Guitarist) Alec (Bolton) and I got together in June of 2024 on his couch and worked on the core of what ‘Werewolf’ would eventually be. When he played the riff, I immediately started singing the first lines of the song. A few weeks later, on a short tour, I finished the lyrics in the back of the van. We were driving after a show so we could make load-in the next night, and I remember thinking, ‘I’m writing this song about how I was an awful person at the end of my relationship—it would be funny if the awful thing you tried to hide was being a werewolf.’ I’m sure it was some coping mechanism for my brain to be able to have some real reflection on my actions and choices in life.”
2) “Get By”
“A lot of our process on this album revolved around getting together at 11 a.m. almost every day of the week and playing together—something we’d done back in 2016 when we first started playing together as a band and something we felt we really needed to do for this album. This song came together on one of those rehearsal days. One by one, as we walked in, we heard this mountain of guitar and immediately wanted to sled down and see where it took us. Micah, our producer and bass player on this record, made a slight change on the drum groove—and all of the sudden, it felt like this towering rock anthem with a country chorus. In other words, perfection?”
3) “Can’t Figure It Out”
“This may really be the song that started it all, the beacon in the dark that led us to the album we wanted to make. It got written in about 20 minutes, and it was one of those songs that feels like years of therapy in one sitting. I’d never really been able to write about things that were happening to me in the moment, but this one changed so much for me as a writer and a person. I was running away from problems that I’d largely caused, and I liked how my legs felt hitting the ground. I showed this song to Alec on the same day we worked out ‘Werewolf’ and ‘Gone For The Weekend,’ and it became the jumping-off point for everything else.”
4) “Super Bowl Sunday”
“Alec brought the riff to a writing session with Micah—and when he showed us, I think we literally screamed with excitement. As we were putting the song together, finding where the puzzle pieces fit, I just sang the line, ‘But it was Super Bowl Sunday.’ I remember the three of us just laughing at this lyric and questioning if you could say that in a song. It felt silly, but also like there was some truth in there. How many absolute dudes out there have ignored something pressing in their real life to go and watch the game with their boys? I bet you can think of five right now without even batting an eye. Anyway, wrap it up in rock ’n’ roll and you’ve got yourself another heater.”
5) “Baby Blue”
“This song dares to ask the question, ‘What if these choir boys finally sang a song in three-part harmony for—almost—the entire time?’ And the proof is in the pudding, folks. This song was probably the first one in existence when we started putting our heads together to make this album. I started writing the verse backstage one night on tour. I was inspired watching Bendigo Fletcher every night, and I was also listening to a ton of John Prine. The verse’s melody just sort of fell out of me. It sat in my voice memos for a time. The song really came into focus after we’d finished a few of the other tunes and had this swampy rock ’n’ roll heading put into the navigation.”
6) “105”
“When you turn over a record and hit play on side two, what more could you want than a song like this? Blistering energy from start to finish, and another song that came from walking into rehearsal, hearing a demo and hitting the ground running. The thing that sticks with me the most is how much fun we had recording it—looking over at Alec and Micah during the live takes and seeing the joy on their faces. It was like being with your best friends on summer break playing flashlight tag all over again. Sometimes the answer is just to play guitar as hard as you can.”
7) “Gone For The Weekend”
“This song and ‘Can’t Figure It Out’ are sisters. They came from the same place and were written within a week or so of each other, and they both talk about generally the same thing: me sabotaging parts of my own life. Musically, it’s the only song on the record that opens with a minor chord, and it’s the only song where the chords are as honest as the lyrics. Normally, we try to cover up sad lyrics with relatively joyful music. The contrast of happy and sad has always been intriguing and can honestly serve as a nice metaphor for how I function in life. With this one, there was no need to mask anything.”
8) “I’ll Have It Down”
“The best thing about this song is the bridge. It comes out of nowhere and makes almost zero sense musically. We worked on it in the same group of writing sessions as ‘Super Bowl Sunday,’ and the only governor in our mind was asking the question, ‘Will this be fun to play live?’ When we tracked this song at Micah’s, I remember looking up before the last chorus hit and seeing Alec having a full-on ‘raise your goblet of rock’ moment. It was like Jack Black himself materialized in the room and gave us the fuel we needed to bring this song to life. I think our governor was mighty pleased with this one.”
9) “Change My Mind”
“An album from the Brook And The Bluff wouldn’t be complete without some yearning. We intended for this version to be a demo. It was recorded Dec. 4, 2024, at a time when we thought we’d come back to track the whole album and do it again. But there was magic in the room that day, because we never even thought about trying it again once we heard the completed version.”
10) “Moving Along”
“From the moment Alec and I started playing the guitars on this song, we knew it was going to be the final track on whatever album we were making. The lines to the verses seemed to already be there as we were writing the song—and everything about it just felt warm and comforting.”
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