For the past seven years, he’s been travelling the world as one half of brother-sister duo Angus [and] Julia, during which time he’s played to spell-bound audiences in sold-out shows at iconic venues like London’s Royal Festival Hall and Paris’s Le Trianon. Together, the artists have sold close to a million records around the world since the release of their debut EP, Chocolates and Cigarettes, in 2005. Now, Angus Stone is setting out on his own.
“I’m excited to let go of it all,” he says of Broken Brights: the first solo album he’s released under his own name. “For the people that have listened to Julia and I play for so long, I’m looking forward to handing it over to them so that they can create their own worlds [and] experiences with the writings. To play live as my own in front of those people, it’s going to be a different trail of gravel [and] gold, but none the less very exciting.”
Broken Brights marks a departure for Angus Stone, and not just from recording with his long-term musical coconspirator Julia. The album is proof that he can deftly shift between genres without compromising his signature sound. While title track ‘Broken Brights’ is a return-to-form for Stone — it’s a nostalgic, dreamy tribute to our youth — ‘Bird On the Buffalo’ is a livelier composition, incorporating distorted guitar riffs, which also make an appearance in the notably rockier ‘It Was Blue’. That string-laden track in particular is proof that his compositional skills transcend the preconceptions you might have about his musical style.
