Macro (Tangerine Vinyl)

“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” Rainer Maria Rilke’s line hangs over Macro like a thesis statement, not as decoration but as method.

Released in 2024 via Ghostly International, Macro is the latest album from Brijean, the project of percussionist and songwriter Brijean Murphy and multi-instrumentalist and producer Doug Stuart. Since their debut, the duo have quietly refined a sound that fuses psych-pop abstraction with dancefloor logic. Where 2021’s Feelings turned inward and 2022’s Angelo processed grief while leaning into movement, Macro feels like an expansion in every direction at once. Bigger emotionally, more playful sonically, and more confident in its contradictions.

The record is rooted in paradox. Joy sits beside ache, lightness beside insomnia, groove beside stillness. Murphy and Stuart frame this not as conflict but as coexistence. Macro thrives on the idea that feeling everything is not only unavoidable but necessary. The songs move with an exploratory flow, rising into high-tempo peaks before drifting into softer psychological valleys, never settling for long.

“Euphoric Avenue” sets the tone, opening a rainbow road of storytelling where beauty and banality blur together. Built initially on organ and drum machine in the duo’s Altadena home, it later blooms with strings, flute, and live drums, a pattern repeated across the album. Friends drift in and out of the sessions, adding texture rather than stealing focus. The result feels communal without becoming cluttered.

That sense of motion continues as astral, weightless tracks like “Roxy” glide alongside the propulsive pop of “Bang Bang Boom” and the restless breaks of “Breathe”. “Counting Sheep” follows as both ballad and bop, born from insomnia and heartbreak but shaped into something strangely comforting. Its groove is gentle yet insistent, a reminder that longing can be both destabilising and grounding.

At its lightest, Macro finds Brijean loosest and most free. “Workin’ On It” began as a late-night living room jam, layered basslines circling percussion and drum machines until Murphy’s half-delirious, half-knowing lyrics slipped into place. Even here, where the record feels playful, it never loses its emotional intelligence. The humour is soft-edged, the self-awareness genuine.

The closing stretch underlines the album’s range. “Rollercoaster” leans fully into disco exhilaration, while “Laura” drifts out on flute-led indie-pop tenderness. Together they act as a final statement of intent. Macro is not about choosing a lane, or committing to a single mood. It is about allowing the full spectrum to exist, trusting that movement itself is the point.

In levelling up their songwriting and widening their emotional palette, Brijean have made their most dynamic record yet. Macro doesn’t resolve the chaos of being alive. It dances through it, breath by breath, groove by groove, holding fast to the idea that no feeling is final.