For a place as cold as Toronto on a November evening, Massey Hall was filled with a warmth only Jeremy Zucker and Chelsea Cutler could provide. An homage to Brentwood Road in the Berkshires, Zucker & Cutler released the third and final collaborative album, ‘brent iii’, on the first of November, 2024. The pair and their band, along with opener Ethan Regan, have been playing across North America on ‘Brent Forever: The Tour’, with one Canadian stop at Toronto’s historic Massey Hall.
Ethan Regan performed a set of simplicity and power. Accompanied by only his voice and his guitar, Regan made new fans of us all with his performances of ‘wildflowers’ and ‘peach tree’. He had the crowd in an attentive hush that erupted into roaring applause as the last chord of each song was played.
As the crowd doubled in size inside Massey Hall, a string quartet swelled and Chelsea Cutler and Jeremy Zucker took the stage. The stage emulated the cozy and quiet space in which the two wrote ‘brent iii’. Between the music and the stage design, you got a sense of how this wonderful music came to be: two friends sharing a space with their guitars, with thoughts of strings and percussion coming to mind as they created this album.
Throughout the show, Cutler and Zucker gave insights into the creative process of the album. Some of their inspirations included our relationships with our parents as we age, old lovers, and toothbrushes. Some songs, like ‘A-frame’, got the crowd rowdy and Zucker stomping on the coffee table centre-stage, while others like ‘love you into loving me’ had the crowd’s phone lights in the air, swaying in time with Cutler’s voice. For nights like this, where the crowd is attentively listening to the pair and their band perform, there is a feeling of fleeting intimacy amongst strangers. Zucker, laid back on the sofa listening to Cutler play solo, mentioned to the crowd that his “favourite part of the night is sitting here and watching Chelsea do her fucking thing.” He shared, “When you’re on stage, it’s a really weird experience and it’s different for a lot of people. It’s hard to be present because I’m thinking about so much, but when Chelsea is doing her thing I can be in that moment and live in that moment”. Thanks to musicians such as Cutler & Zucker, we get the gift of that moment; in the quiet singing, the gentle swaying, and the clapping of hands, we all join to celebrate something that brings us together.
Chelsea Cutler & Jeremy Zucker complete ‘Brent Forever: The Tour’ on 8th of December 2024 in Denver, CO, but ‘brent iii’ is available for streaming on all music platforms.
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