Fusing old school string band instrumentation with rock and roll exuberance, The Brothers Comatose cement their status as standard bearers of a thriving, innovative West Coast roots movement on their intoxicating new album, Golden Grass. Recorded with co-producers Greg Holden and Tim Bluhm, the collection is as diverse and enthralling as the California landscape itself—at times carefree and breezy, at times wild and rugged—with lush, organic arrangements full of rich vocal harmonies and driving guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and upright bass. While the record marks the group’s first release with newest member Addie Levy, the result is quintessential Brothers Comatose: a warm, joyful reflection on identity and the ties that bind from a band that knows exactly who they are (and exactly where they come from).
Founded by Ben and Alex Morrison in 2008, The Brothers Comatose first emerged from San Francisco with their 2010 debut, Songs From The Stoop, which helped earn dates with the likes of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Greensky Bluegrass, and Trampled By Turtles. In the decade-and-a-half that followed, the critically acclaimed quintet would go on to release five more full-length LPs, rack up nearly 50 million streams, land festival slots at Outside Lands, High Sierra, and Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, tour with Lake Street Dive, The Devil Makes Three, and Yonder Mountain String Band, and build up a devoted following thanks to their raucous live shows and relentless schedule.
Goodnight, Texas
Goodnight, Texas is a band you’ve heard somewhere. You’re going through their catalog, hearing lyrics about trapped coal miners and lovebird bank robbers. Banjos and mandolins, genre tough to pin down. Now you’re interested, so you go see them live. The show is swelling to a fever pitch, and suddenly they’re singing devastating harmonies off mic, then rocking again, full tilt. Afterward you venture over to merch, and you’re curious about their new album Signals, since they did some of the new songs.
You investigate in headphones and indeed, the album kicks. The first single, “RUNAWAYS,” even features a guest solo from Metallica’s Kirk Hammett, who admired the band’s version of “Of Wolf and Man” on the 2022 covers album The Metallica Blacklist. Beyond the memorable sock-you-in-the-face riffs, GN, TX seems to be stretching sonic roots deeper in every direction on Signals, with studio help from Oakland’s Ian and Jay Pellicci (Deerhoof, Tune-Yards). Stories of the Americana of yore blend into the near past and present via tales of DB Cooper and North Dakota oil field workers. Electric guitars pound like hammers, but the mandolins still twinkle like dim stars.
Googling, you find recent features in NME, Rolling Stone, No Depression and Consequence of Sound, and appearances at festivals such as Austin City Limits, SXSW, Red Wing Roots, Old Settlers Festival and Beachlife Ranch. They’ve toured with acts such as The Dead South, Larkin Poe, Shakey Graves, Trampled by Turtles, The Brothers Comatose, and John Craigie. In 2020, their song “The Railroad” was the opening montage theme for episode one of Tiger King, which had 53 million streams in its first week. Maybe that’s where you heard them in the first place. Or maybe it was the Coors Banquet commercial with Sam Elliott. Wait a minute, they have 250 million streams across platforms. Maybe you heard them in your favorite bar, or your friend’s car.
Still at the merch table at last call, you learn: Goodnight, Texas is named for an actual hamlet of 27 people and dozens of dogs, the exact mile-for-mile midpoint between co-founders Avi Vinocur and Patrick Dyer Wolf’s homes on each coast. They’ve been there a bunch of times, most recently to play a show for everybody who was around, and to hand out copies of the new album.
