Premiere: Rainstorm Brother, ‘If I Were the Smoke’

Kevin Bronson on July 23rd, 2018

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Rainstorm Brother [John Isaac Watters] (Photo by Daniel Johnson)

John Isaac Watters has long been among the most cerebral, although underappeciated, purveyors of folk music in Los Angeles, his spare meditations fraught with the fragility of his own humanity (and yours). During his 2016 residency at the Hi Hat, Watters unveiled the new collaboration Rainstorm Brother, which finds the singer-songwriter (and former architect) working with keyboardist-producer Tyler Chester to achieve a sound that might be described as cinematic freak-folk … or, at least, experimental and extraordinary.

In November, the duo will release their first EP, “Pt. 1,” a combination of Watters’ quavering, gravitas-laden ruminations with Chester’s synthesizers, strings, various electronics, drums and electric guitar — imagine the marriage of Sparklehorse and the National, folk music for the big screen. (Watters has proven very good at that.). The EP’s first track, “Drivin’,” was released back in 2016, originally under Watters’ name before the collaboration took on an identity of its down.

The more free-form “If I Were the Smoke” reveals Watters’ ability to crystallize a moment in a few plainspoken lines: “If I were the smoke / I would come in close like that all night / to hear you singin’ low and sad.” The sequencers and strings give the song a dissonant drone that suits the song’s lament — the singer is, quite obviously, not the smoke. “It’s an ode to wanting so badly to be more present or committed in a relationship,” Watters says, “but for whatever reason, you can’t in the way that you want to be.”

The six-track EP features Madison Cunningham (Verve Records, Live From Here with Chris Thile), guitarist/engineer Justin Stanley (Beck, Leonard Cohen) and drummer James McAlister (The National, Sufjan Stevens).

||| Stream: “If I Were the Smoke”