San Franciscans hop on and off the Muni lines, 5 Fulton or 24 Divisadero buses, like real city dwellers—or wait outside bars and clubs for that driverless car service, more along the lines of suburban brats.
Locals generate community, “chop it” around Black barbershops, holding court, dapping each other up, while Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” blares inside the neon-lit establishment turned Friday night cool hang. Vendors begin firing up their bacon-wrapped hot dog stands for the “drunkie-puffy coat bros” who appear right around 1:45am and make that oh-so-questionable gastronomic decision.
All of these scenarios play out on Divisadero, under a fog-blown sky while couples, all types—met on apps, rekindling the relationship, ladies’ night out, young dudes getting after it, or first-time daters contemplating “do I want this fool in my apartment at 3am, really”—get slices at Sunset Squares and quick drinks at Mini-Bar…
…and eventually head to see Brijean at The Independent on Friday last. ‘Cause those former East Bay residents play the coolest combo—sexy music done with love—of modern psychedelic pop meets jazz-house-disco-tropicalia that speaks a language all couples, even some throuples (they out there too) like to be in the presence of.
There is just one universal response from fellow DJs and listening/dancing patrons alike whenever I can drop a quintessential Brijean tune on the turntable:
WHAT? Who in the hell is that?
As a selector or vibe merchant at a tucked-away bar or large-scale nightspot, that’s what you want! Blowing somebody’s wig back.
Brijean, the once Oakland-based but now Altadena-centered group, never really blows anybody’s wig back; it’s more of a half-time lazy micro-climate, loaded to the hilt with percussionist-singer-songwriter Brijean Murphy’s reserved vocal inflections pushing mixed emotions. Smoggy skies if you will, over multi-instrumentalist and producer Doug Stuart’s low-end bass tempos.
He keeps it on the disco tip for the duo’s project and outer experimental jazzbo steeze for his solo releases, which are banging, btw.
Since their 2018 debut Walkie Talkie, Brijean, with specific detail, throughout four releases, has customized homemade latitudes for dealing out bossa nova, indie, Latin, jazz, and 4/4 confections into this elevated type of psychedelic pop.
They are that Bay-Area “I’ma do it my way” special. An instinct that remains with them at each new home location.
Murphy’s signature percussion stamp can be heard throughout numerous Bay Area-based albums, including the opening seconds of Toro y Moi’s 2019 liquefied bass jam “Ordinary Pleasure,” wherein the percussion drives all that gladness. Brijean’s sound is a studied DNA inheritance. She was taught by her father, percussionist and engineer Patrick Murphy; her first patterns on a pair of congas that she inherited from the late Trinidadian steel drum legend Vince Charles.
This was my second time bearing Brijean witness at The Independent in two years, and she beamed at partner Stuart as they performed, on her birthday by the way.
It’s music plus vision emitting symmetry. Togetherness. That joy wafted throughout the venue for over an hour; an organic wave. These musical partners draw an adult crowd who knows how to act, dress, tip, party, and give love back to the performers and bar staff as well. Brijean, pulling more songs from their previous efforts, especially Feelings from 2021, made folks sweat, nope. Glow, in that kindly, lovingly fashion. While Murphy and Stuart just churn out smoothness.
Even a new tune from their recently released album, Macro, “Bang Bang Boom” jams to that enhanced freak-beat ESG-type energy, inspired by Murphy’s thinking about the Big Bang theory, life, death, and a potential afterlife.
Constructed with a musical diet of distorted drums, guitar, and fuzzed-toned bass—the track still lines up with cool vibes and unquestionable wiggle potential served through that whispery Brijean vox. Divisidero’s best and, from what I could gather from the crowd reaction from Doug Stewart’s shout “What’s Up Oakland,” that of the East Bay reveled in this celebrated hometown show. For that Willie Bobo-esque conga flow Brijean pulses out with those fingers and palms of her bare hands, generating that cross-rhythm spirit—touching minds, hearts, and feet. With love.
It’s one thing to be good; Brijean remains legit.
