Northern Californian singer-songwriter Brett Dennen comes across as the most amiable of rebels. His brand of easy-listening folk-pop has earned him comparisons to contemporaries like Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz, as well as predecessors like John Denver and Paul Simon. The red-headed and boyish-looking 6’5” crooner balances a mainstream-friendly sound and homely poeticism with a decidedly counter-cultural lifestyle. A third of his life is spent on the scenic Sierra Nevada Mountains; his live tours double as a sincere effort at environmental activism. Instead of reveling in an anti-social isolation or adopting a pretentious holier-than-thou stance, however, Dennen invites listeners to lean into his cause and partake in a laidback camaraderie.
"Already Gone", the lead single from Dennen’s latest EP Lets… (2018), finds Dennen taking flight from the everyday pastimes of urban dwellers. The EP was recorded with Grammy-winning songwriter/producer Dan Wilson, who is best known for marrying raw emotional authenticity with accessibility (he co-wrote the Dixie Chicks’ "Not Ready to Make Nice" and Adele’s "Someone Like You"). The upbeat and catchy tune is built around a series of rejections (‘No time for coffee or conversation/ Get the feeling I stay too long/ Suspicious eyes at the subway station/ Bye bye, I'm already gone’), but there’s an underlying optimism that something more fulfilling awaits around the next corner.
The song itself does not specify what Dennen fails to find in the company of karaoke enthusiasts and Tallahassee party-goers. He sees it as a feel-good call to action: “This song is about making a decision instead of sitting around and thinking about what to do.” Its appeal lies in the thrill of approaching an unspecified possibility, of escaping known constraints: “I imagine myself gliding down a mountain or running down an empty highway somewhere. Both have the feeling of release." You can look at it any way you want; it still amounts to a whole lot of fun.
