Rhythm, Racket, & Romance is a record that’s clearly loaded with emotional depth within it. It mixes the sombre with the upbeat, the rainy days with the ones filled with pomp, and the mundane with the spectacular. But really, what the record is truly about, is Billy Bronsted’s own experience, his own life, and his own stories. It’s deeply vulnerable, scarring, and intimate for all to see. The songs feel like pages ripped out of Bronsted’s own diary, completely revealing to the world his own scars and highs for the listener. You can tell this worked as something therapeutic for the Wisconsisn based songwriter. Honest music isn’t easy to come by these days, the kind that’s truly and so openly authentic. But Bronsted lays his heart out for all to see so openly and gladly on this record that you’re endeared without an option.
Although that opening may have sounded overly dark and sombre, the truth is that Rhythm, Racket, & Romance is a lot more exciting and light hearted than what my description might lend you to believe. From the opening piece, ‘Round This Way’, the bluesy Americana fusion that Bronsted so expertly brings to life has you singing along to this infectious piece of rock and roll.
Of course, that isn’t to say that the songs are all completely just spritely. Bronsted wrote “Let’s Fall in Love” on a friend’s couch in Telluride, CO after spending his last $14 on a pack of American Spirits and a 6 pack of Rainier. He’d been on a hell run and just days before had a pistol pointed at his head at the base of an apartment stairwell in Page, AZ. But the song feels hopeful, it’s so innately warm and glistening with sunshine that you’re drawn to the prospect of that first night with the significant other who makes you feel whole.
One of the most poignant, emotional, and relatable rock records of 2022.