Vents MagaZine Music and Entertainment Magazine
Related Articles
Today, NYC-based genre-bending soul-rock 5-piece Brandi & The Alexanders announce their next EP, Reflection and share lead single “Fire”: a high-energy funk-meets-blues-meets-rock-n-roll anthem. On their latest offering, Brandi Thompson’s vocals are showstopping.
On the story behind the song, lead singer Brandi Thompson shares: “The spring of 2020, a second Civil Rights Movement overwhelmed the United states. I was as swept up in the movement as anyone, but I decided to write a song to not just stand against the brutality that was happening that spring, but to remind my listeners that this brutality and discrimination is not new; my ancestors survived similar brutality and discrimination – like that which we saw in 2020 and the many years prior – for centuries. I’m proud to be a product of the ancestors who survived generation after generation; their strength is my strength, and I wrote this song to honor them. As the saying goes, I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams. Theirs are the shoulders on which I stand and which have gotten me where I am today.”
Powerful and empowering, cinematic and larger than life, “Fire” strikes a match for the group’s powerful upcoming EP. Reflection is a slowly crafted EP that is a step forward in Brandi and the Alexanders experimentation in music and sonics, a time capsule of a strange period, and an autobiography about self-reflection, self-doubt, and identity. It is filtered by months of recording and communication in isolation, protests, Tina Turner records, trading mixtapes, late night debates, 70’s gangster movies, and literal blood sweat and tears. A must-listen for fans of Alabama Shakes, Brittany Howard, The Black Keys, Durand Jones and the Indications, Adia Victoria, Devon Gilfillian, Seratones, Lady Wray, and Black Pumas.
Brandi Thompson comments “the spring of 2020, a second Civil Rights Movement overwhelmed the United states. I was as swept up in the movement as anyone, but I decided to write a song to not just stand against the brutality that was happening that spring, but to remind my listeners that this brutality and discrimination is not new; my ancestors survived similar brutality and discrimination – like that which we saw in 2020 and the many years prior – for centuries. I’m proud to be a product of the ancestors who survived generation after generation; their strength is my strength, and I wrote this song to honor them. As the saying goes, I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams. Theirs are the shoulders on which I stand and which have gotten me where I am today.”
