Brenda Weiler preview

Brenda Weiler
Uncommon Ground, Chicago
Saturday, October 13, 2007

On End The Rain (Speaker Phone), singer-songwriter Brenda Weiler grapples with her older sister’s 2005 suicide. Placed on the album in the order they were written, the 11 songs plaintively detail Weiler’s thought process throughout this tumultuous time.

Standing emotionally wrecked and naked before the listener, Weiler’s stark compositions receive a slight boost from her tiny vocals, which try as they might, inject shards of hope into the material. But, Weiler’s voice, strangely reminiscent of Jewel, can’t mask the weight of the lyrics.

The title track finds Weiler questioning the memory of someone very in particular with, “Can I say goodbye when I’m not done with you?/How can I say goodbye when you didn’t?” and far from assuaging herself from the guilt that those left behind often feel, Weiler beats herself up in “Out Of Control” and sings, “I should’ve expected/what ended up happening/but I can barely believe it/even now.”

The North Dakota native surely finds some catharsis in both writing and performing these tracks, but listeners may find the lack of a buffer disconcerting. Consuming the album and, one imagines, sitting in the audience feels only two degrees away from actually paying respects at the girl’s wake while her family greets mourners with the expression of the waking dead.

This show celebrates the release of End The Rain, but a party seems perfunctory.

Josh Harty opens.

— Janine Schaults

Category: Stage Buzz, Weekly