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Brooks J Martin’s new album doesn’t have a clever title. It is the type of singer-songwriter album that only Martin could make.

His fifth full-length release, Brooks J Martin, is a noir-ish collection of folk songs lavished with Brian Wilson-like symphonic grandeur and teeming with abstract lyrical expression. 

“It’s as authentic as I can be—age and experience makes you less self-conscious,” the Cedar Falls, Iowa-based artist says. “I just reached a point where I was ready to drop the facade.” 

Martin has previously released albums under the band monikers Toast and The Blue Danes and recorded under the alias Frank Hansen. However, in contrast to this clandestine creativity, he grew up in a household where music was at the forefront of life. His grandfather was a jazz musician, and his mom and aunt are singers. 

Martin started learning piano at 8, and guitar at 14. 

He would go on to play in bands for years but preferred to keep his professional life separate from his music until now. Martin grandly does away with career compartmentalization on Brooks J Martin. “I think this album is the best version of what I do,” he admits.

The constants in Martin’s artistic evolution remain a preference for lyrics that convey moods and feelings over linear narratives and emotional directness. “I write through a process of stream of consciousness,” Martin says. “But what comes out is usually in my head for a reason, so they do say something about me.” 

Another through-line in his music is Martin’s dreamy baritone voice, which recalls the romantic crooning of post-punk, new wave, and Brit-pop. On past albums, he’s delegated much of the music to crunchy, alt-rock style guitars, but Brooks J Martin’s cinematic sensibility lends his trademark vocals a romantic gravitas. 

The album’s nuanced musicality also showcases Martin’s multi-instrumentalist skills—he played guitars, vocals, piano and handled all the lead vocals on the album—and his gift for orchestration. “I’m older now, and quiet is good,” he says with a laugh. “I favor Beethoven over punk rock these days.” 

Brooks J Martin is a Woodie Guthrie/Neil Young/ Leonard Cohen kind of album. The songs are constructed like folk songs with instantly familiar melodies. Yet, Martin’s lushly layered aesthetic aligns his music with artists such as The National, David Bowie, and Radiohead, where the presentation of the songs is as crucial to the art as the songwriting. 

“I love that big wall of sound. Nowadays, it’s easy to capture that with MIDI and plugins, but you can tell it’s not the real thing. It’s missing the little flaws and slightly out-of-tuneness. I prefer the humanness of real musicians playing real instruments, ” Martin says.

An atmospheric elegance courses through the song “Breathe,” with its layers of strings, piano, folksy guitars, and Martin’s dreamy low-end vocals. The song has a disquieting beauty perfectly aligned with its lyrics. One standout passage reads: If you see me lying in pieces/would you put me back together/Would you gather all the heartstrings and reattach them to you. This is Martin’s statement on anxiety, and with sensual artfulness, it comes to life in a video directed by Bobby Hanford (Wyatt Flores, John Legend, Vic Mensa). 

Martin creates an evocative, Beatles-esque song about fleeing the frigid Iowa winter for a safe haven of Southern California on “Clear Blue Waters.” The rustic but melancholy “Millions” is a Midwestern country song with a feeling of yearning for adventure. The cinematic “Straight Over Me” oozes a gloomy grandeur that pulls you in with a hypnotic series of chords and elegiac strings. “It’s one of the darkest songs on the album, but I still haven’t figured out what it’s about,” Martin says.

Brooks J Martin was tracked at Catamount Recording, the site of recording Stone Sour’s Gold-certified and Grammy-nominated self-titled debut album. The studio was previously owned by that album’s producer, Tom Tatman, with whom Martin has worked on past albums. Martin is now the owner of Catamount Recording, and for this album, he worked with Tatman’s protégé, producer and engineer, Travis Huisman. 

Brooks J Martin may be Martin’s final musical statement, and if so, he will be going out on an artistic apogee. He says: “It would be hard to top this album, and I don’t know how many albums I have left in me. This might be it.”