Bosque Brown
Hometown: Ft Worth TX
For all intents and purposes, Mara Lee Miller is a solo singer songwriter but has chosen the moniker Bosque Brown as the vehicle for her recordings. Her lyrics are simple and full of “truth-telling” and “woe.” Bosque Brown Plays Mara Lee Miller was released May 2005 and was backed by a wonderful handful of musicians from Seattle. The latest release is a vinyl one-sided LP which consists of four songs and an etching on the b side. A cd version is also included with the LP for portability. Listen at Last.fm
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TheOwlMag on Bosque Brown
4 months agoBosque Brown Baby [Burnt Toast Vinyl]
Bosque Brown – driven by Mara Lee Miller and her commanding vocals – brings haunting, textured folk songs steeped in Texas tradition. Having been discovered by Damien Jurado, they share that classic singer/songwriter intense closeness to the lyrics. Miller’s voice has a throaty, smoky quality not unlike Cat Power, with echo-effect adding a distant mysteriousness, but is also full of quirky inflections that are like a pinch of Joanna Newsom thrown into a Southern accent. Closer comparisons point to Alela Diane and Tiny Vipers, whose striking pipes take their music through stark vocal explorations and folky guitar songs. Bosque Brown goes beyond this with heavy texture and tape buzz, making each track sound like a wholly crafted portrait or landscape, mostly substituting piano for guitar as melodic accompaniment.
Baby is centered on Miller’s tiny hometown of Stephenville, from whose Bosque River the band takes its name. “Texas Sun” is a languid cowboy song, the pace and wailing pedal steel shaping visions of vast space and dusty feet. Miller sings, “This Texas sun will burn up all the land/These rolling winds will turn us all to sand,” suggesting not only a view of a town, but contemplations of life, death, and the great unknown. The cute ditty “Train Song” is the album’s catchiest number, with high harmonizing vocals presenting the jingle-like chorus, but the lyrics are again somber. The train passes by as Miller returns “to where they all know my name/it’s always been the same,” finding it pointless to attempt change when we all end up at the same place in the end. Bosque Brown’s songs are powerful in theme and craft, and Miller’s voice grabs the attention in a way that causes delight and terror at the same time.
more at theowlmag.comgorillavsbear on Bosque Brown
about 4 years agoBaby allegedly features lusher, more expansive instrumentation than anything we've heard from Bosque Brown in the past, but like everything Ms. Miller touches, this song retains a sort of haunting timeless quality that brings the chills every time more at gorillavsbear.blogspot.com