There’s a quiet kind of confidence in Brooks John Martin’s self-titled album. This is a gentle culmination of stories, years and identities and it is all laid out in this richly textured and deeply personal collection.

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After years of recording under names like Toast and Frank Hansen, Martin drops the masks. He is not hiding behind a character anymore. What we get instead is a record that’s stripped down emotionally, even as the music swells with orchestral grandeur and noir-folk atmosphere.

The opening track “Tide Will Carry Me Away” is the perfect opener, with rich textures and a chorus that feels dreamy and distant.

“Clear Blue Waters” captures the tension further. It’s soaked in longing, built on stacked harmonies that drift somewhere between the Beach Boys and a heatwave hallucination. Inspired by a cold winter night and a dream of Malibu, this song is escapist in spirit but haunted by real-world context – the fires that have since scarred the coast where its video was filmed.

Throughout the album, Martin brings a sound palette that is both nostalgic and cinematic. You can hear echoes of The National’s emotional weight, Radiohead’s spacious intensity and the stylized drama of Bowie’s later work – but it never feels derivative. This is a record with its own internal weather system, slow-moving and thunderous.

The haunting “Straight Over Me” plunges into brooding, noir-lit depths with its hypnotic chord progression and mournful strings echoing the album’s overarching themes of introspection and reckoning.

“Millions” hits especially hard – equal parts weary and anthemic, it is like someone trying to remember what hope feels like. And the orchestration across the board? Lush, deliberate and gorgeously produced, thanks to the production at Martin’s own Catamount Recording studio.

What makes this albums stick though is the feeling that this may be Martin’s final musical statement. There is a gravity to that, and also a freedom. These are not songs written to chase trends but they are here because they had to be. Because Brooks John Martin needed to say them, finally, in his own name.

Whether this is truly the end or just the end of a chapter, Brooks John Martin is definitely a record that lingers. It is not trying to impress, but just trying to be understood. And it is!

About Brooks John Martin

Brooks John Martin is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in Cedar Falls, Iowa, whose work blends cinematic folk, abstract lyricism with lush orchestration. With a deep baritone voice and a stream-of-consciousness writing style, Martin writes emotionally resonant songs that feel both timeless and otherworldly.

After years of performing under various monikers – Toast, The Blue Danes, and Frank Hansen – Martin sheds all aliases on his fifth and most personal album to date, “Brooks John Martin.”

Raised in a musically rich household and trained on piano and guitar from a young age, he combines a lifelong passion for melody with the maturity of lived experience. The result is an album steeped in Brian Wilson-like grandeur and grounded in folk tradition, with nods to Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and the atmospheric stylings of Radiohead and The National.

Now the owner of Catamount Recording, Martin brings a producer’s ear and a poet’s heart to his music, favoring analog imperfection over digital polish. His latest album is more a statement of his art, a moment of artistic unmasking and, possibly, a final chapter. Honest, unfiltered and wholly himself.

Keep up to date with Brooks John Martin on his Website.

Stream music on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music.