Brunch Take on Nostalgia and Radical Hope With New Singles
Burlington rock band Brunch have released double A-side singles “Please Kill Me” and “Man Alive”, alongside a new music video.
NEW RELEASESROCK
MADDI DUARTE
8/13/20262 min read
Photo: Mary Kate McGuirk
Burlington, Vermont-based rock band Brunch have released two new singles, “Please Kill Me” and “Man Alive”. The two songs arrive as a double A-side release and follow the band’s 2024 EP DOGINYA and 2025 release Live At Robot Dog.
Brunch is made up of Philip Bern on guitar, Mason Kosman on bass, Ayden Flanigan on drums, and Cameron Mincar on guitar. Their new songs continue some of the ideas found in their earlier work, including references to literature, music history, existential philosophy and different periods of rock music.
“Please Kill Me” takes its name from the well-known oral history of the punk scene. The track focuses on nostalgia and cultural memory, while using different instruments and synthesizers throughout the song. The band describe the track by saying, “The song sounds almost like it could belong to any decade without exactly belonging to any of them.”
The song also comes with a new DIY music video filmed at Devil’s Bowl Speedway. The band performed the song at the New England dirt race track after a day watching races there. Speaking about the video, the band said, “Halfway through the race there was a huge four car pileup that took a construction crew 30 minutes to remove from the track while everyone watched. You can see in the video our reactions to the crash and the clean-up — the cars were totaled but thankfully none of the drivers were hurt. After the race the owners let us out onto the tracks in our van and we set up right in the middle and played along to the song. Before we left, we all piled into the back of the van and played our instruments while our friend drove us around the track. It was a bumpy ride, but the excitement of that night comes across in the video and matches the energy of 'Please Kill Me' perfectly.”
The second single, “Man Alive”, moves into a more personal subject. The song deals with depression, love and the difficulties of being human. Brunch also reference writers and filmmakers including Jorge Luis Borges, David Lynch, James Joyce and Haruki Murakami in connection with the track. The band explain, “It’s about struggling with the difficulties of being a human while holding onto radical hopefulness and love for others, a topic deeply influenced by existential philosophy. It’s a song about radical antagonisms; light and darkness, dreams and reality, each defining itself by its own opposite.”
Listen to “Please Kill Me” and “Man Alive”:
LATEST POSTS:
Like discovering new music? Subscribe!
*By subscribing, you agree to receive communications from The Aux.