Mary Bragg’s Brilliant Camouflage

Posted on Mar 26, 2019 in Album Reviews

Check out our review of Violets As Camouflage by Mary Bragg

Mary Bragg’s ‘Violets As Camouflage’

– One of the Year’s Best Releases

By Rob Dickens

Something happens here that grabs your attention.

Violets As Camouflage by Mary Bragg (via Tone Tree Music) was released this month. It starts well, but not that startlingly, with the introductory, jazzy “I Thought You Were Somebody Else”. By about track four I am starting to take serious note, the narratives and Bragg’s aching vocals swirling around the room. Track five (“Fight”) is a duet with the highly-underrated Robbie Hecht and is stunningly good (see clip below). “Fool” follows – with its intriguing opening line “Pardon me can I buy you a drink? For old-time sake or just for me?“. What follows is a narrative about regrets, about breaking up, and posing the question is there still a chance maybe “you can love a fool”.

“The country tinge Of “Trouble Me Anytime” provides some fun, temporary light relief in tone and sentiment and a reminder not to take things too seriously.

“You Rescue Me” returns us irrevocably, like the inevitable tide, to Bragg’s brave lyrics and glorious voice, her singing so sublime when blended with the cello. “This Feeling” is remarkable – insistent with its fuzzy guitar. The pace quickens for the country rock of “Runaway Town” with its ’empty pocket pilgrims’ while “Sad Stories” is another songwriting gem. “The Highest Tower” provides even more evidence of Bragg’s soaring vocals and the closer “More Than You Do” leaves us with some healthy advice, a take-away notion for this age where there is so much self-entitlement without the necessary nose-to-the-grindstone humility.

Just released, here is the video for the powerful “Fight” (co-written by Bragg and Hecht):

Violets as Camouflage was self-produced and self-engineered at Bragg’s home studio and the fourteen-song collection is a follow-up to 2017’s critically acclaimed Lucky Strike. This new offering is beautiful, courageous and blunt, one of the finds of the year.