Brown Horse will release their debut album Reservoir on 19th January via Loose Records. The album is preceded by the new single “Shoot Back” now. Of the track, the band say: “It’s a questioning, frustrated kind of song. The lines in the chorus were based on something we heard someone say in a union branch meeting. It’s a pretty angry song in a lot of ways but there’s maybe some hopefulness mixed in there too”.

Rooted in a collaborative approach to songwriting, the six-piece mix guitar-driven 90s alternative rock with the folk and country sounds of the 70s. ‘Reservoir’ is the debut album from Brown Horse. Although recorded over just four days in a quiet corner of Norfolk, the album is a collaborative effort years in the making.

Starting life in 2018 as a folk quartet, Emma Tovell, Nyle Holihan, Patrick Turner and Rowan Braham spent their early days playing old time standards, Michael Hurley covers and original songs in pubs across England. Coming back together in 2022 post-pandemic, the group moved towards a heavier, guitar-driven sound. Introducing Ben Auld to the band on drums, Brown Horse began to make a name for themselves in the resurgent scene of their adopted hometown, Norwich. With the addition of Phoebe Troup in the summer of 2023 completing the line-up, Brown Horse made the short drive to Sickroom Studios, where they spent four days recording with Owen Turner.

The songs of ‘Reservoir’ are rooted in a country-rock tradition. While the band acknowledges an indebtedness to the turn-of-the-millennium alt-country sounds of Uncle Tupelo, Silver Jews, Lucinda Williams, and Jason Molina, the songs on the album also resonate with the preceding “Last Waltz’” generation of seventies folk-rock artists, as well as more recent works. Speaking about the new album, Brown Horse say:

“When it came time to record, the most difficult thing was working out which songs we would have to leave out. All of us in Brown Horse are songwriters, and each of us have been writing for years, which meant we were walking into the studio with a pretty big back catalogue of songs we couldn’t hope to record all of in just a few days. In the end, we felt that the songs which make up ‘Reservoir’ shared something tonally; a kind of dark undercurrent which verges on desperation at points. It’s kind of a sad album, which is strange given how much fun we had making it”.

Brown Horse
Reservoir
Loose Records

Stealing Horses
Reservoir
Shoot Back
Everlasting
Bloodstain
Paul Gilley
Sunfisher
Silver Bullet
Outtakes
Called Away

Order Reservoir by Brown Horse HERE