Brooks Hubbard offers a fine selection of his original songs on his eight disc album Press Play. Hailing from New Hampshire’s Upper Valley, this singer-songwriter plays, guitar, banjo, mandolin, piano and drums on this recording. With bass from Justin Kimball and backing vocals from Kaylene Lemme, Hubbard showcases his unusually high level of talent in an easygoing manner that makes it all sound effortless.
Title track “Press Play” opens the disc with Hubbard’s philosophy of life, complete with his winsome vocal, chirpy personality, and playful guitar melody. This song falls gently on the listener like a warm blanket. Hubbard walks us right in with his embraceable acoustic guitar strum, and, before you know it, you feel like singing along to his catchy chorus. His lead guitar melody sounds naturally sweet, and its icing on the cake quality gives another reason to enjoy this song.
“Summer Girl” rocks things up a bit. Hubbard has a motivational groove going on. His drumming is adept enough to keep listeners tapping their toes. Once one gets into the groove here, one notices the winsome vocal charm. Hubbard comes across with a world class sincerity. He also has something to say about a relationship that was important to him. He makes you care about his lyrics because he puts them across with utter sincerity.
“Unclear,” featuring backing vocalist Kaylene Lemme, has a wide, engaging, all encompassing chorus that draws in all around it. Lemme helps Hubbard maintain the musical quality of that wide chorus. Hubbard’s mesh of electric and acoustic guitars and mandolin is a fine weave, textured for maximum quality, impressive without trying to sound impressive but an embraceable backdrop of the song.
“Not A Love Song” finds Hubbard singing in a plaintive tone that allows this number draw to one in with its emotional honesty. It’s also a fun, tightly compacted number that attracts with it structured rhythms and with how Hubbard’s voice stretches over its narrative arc. His lead guitar melody is also a charmer, simple but pleasant and catchy.
“Twenty One” reflects an insightfulness unusual for such a young artist. Here, he ruminates on the transitory nature of young love and early relationships. Hubbard hits that tender spot between bitter and sweet as he reflects on a bittersweet experience. His songwriting gets right to the heart of the matter while his tender acoustic guitar melody hits you in the same soft spot. “You give love and then you go.”
“Wish I Was A Kid” reflects Hubbard’s longing for the fun, simple, companionship of childhood. Singing over a plucky acoustic guitar strum, Hubbard recalls with vivid fondness, that easy, energetic rush of riding a swing, lollipops, and hide and seek, a world far less challenging than the one adults get to know. He wraps his words of wisdom in his warm, embraceable vocal sweep and sweet mandolin notes. The musical accompaniment he builds is like a candy store of bright, sweet, tender notes that perfectly capture and express the feeling of his song.
Hubbard closes out his eight track disc with “I’d Rather Be Honest,” a solo acoustic number that gives him a lot of space to fill with his boyishly handsome voice. That is all he needs to make this pared down number work. He fills it with emotion with every utterance, like a clarion call of feeling, longing, bittersweet endings in his vocal assertions.
Hubbard is clearly the beginning of something big. He plays out more often than most local artists. His next step should be to get out of the narrow confines of his New Hampshire music scene and into the wider New England scene before making a sweep of the country’s entire northeast. With the amount of talent this young fellow has, he’d be well advised to go for the gold.
