Brian Dunne sings with poetic agility and humor about mental unease and everyday need ★★★★☆

A beautiful music story: our Dutch roots hero Danny Vera discovered the three-year-old song New Tattoo by the young American singer-songwriter Brian Dunne, and decided to sell it here. Successfully. The Netherlands embraced the singer from New York, and he became a beautiful Americana discovery here. Dunne signed to Vera’s own record label, and he went to the Netherlands last week for a series of club shows. Dunne became ‘big in NL’.

In Club Nine by TivoliVredenburg you can immediately hear why Dunne is so popular with the audience, who had already let themselves be captivated by those perfect roots songs by Danny Vera. Dunne has a clean and somewhat thin singing voice with a cut crystal edge, and his songs are just as clear. His songs, plucked on the guitar or played on the piano, are about everyday observations and painful discoveries Dunne makes while wandering around in his own head. In an intimate song like Chasing Down a Ghost he sings with poetic agility about spiritual unease that a person can sneak up on and knock down unexpectedly. †It’s not enough to kill you, but it’ll get you pretty close† Dunne sings the song almost unaccompanied, with a barely audible guitar. The audience is dead silent, letting Dunne’s sentences do their thing.

Dunne is a strong storyteller who can take an audience along in his ruminations, which often lead to laughter. He sings about the urge he often feels to not be there, to switch off and to blend in with his surroundings. ‘That’s fine if you’re in the middle seat on a full plane, but not when people are talking to you,’ he notes in the introduction to one of his songs. Dunne has three hands full of sublime roots songs in his guitar case, and can hold a room for an hour and a half with them. Danny Vera: Thank you.