Inside The Credits 058: Brad Cook
Brad Cook’s Path From Rock Masterpiece Engineer To Folk Pop Rock Auteur Producer
It happened again. I found a new artist who lit up my ear and I looked inside the credits. I found their producer and went back through their catalog. I found that they helped create other stuff that I love. Let me introduce you to Brad Cook, the mastermind behind the boards of the just released Jensen McRae album I can’t get out of my head and can’t stop listening to.
I Don’t Know How But They Found Me! is one of the very few folk pop rock albums I’ve liked out of the continually growing slew of them that have been released in the past 5 to 10 years. Of course, so much of what makes it great lies within the vocalist. Jensen McRae strikes a crazy balance and proficiency within the genre that elevates her. She is clever to the point of actually evoking laughs while being heart centered without being too vague. Her tone is like a perfectly crafted warm dirty chai with oat milk and her phrasing is both satisfying and surprising simultaneously.
Yet, what completes the puzzle is the way Cook’s production wraps around the generational singer songwriter’s flow. All the acoustic sounds are equally warm and hopeful even as the lyrics display looming pain. Cook uses a deft hand on tracks like “Savannah” to mark the transitional moments with creep-ins rather than sudden blasts of new instruments. He even executes subtle dropouts of entire sounds to allow McRae to explode emotionally through her melodies like on the poignant phrase “You swore you’d raise our kids to end up just like you.” Then when she continues with a raspy boom solidifying her statement with “Well you’re a false profit and that’s a goddamn promise,” all the combined instrumental verve glides back in to support her empowerment.
My favorite production on the album though arrives on the showstopper “Mother Wound.” The roll of the drums and minor piano cadences mirror the exact feeling of walking on eggshells in a toxic romance. As the sticky hook emerges, the guitar and bass solely play the background acting as a representation of a burgeoning desire to break free on the other side of the hurt.
The sole other folk pop rock album led by a woman vocalist that I’ve connected with in the last decade is Indigo De Souza’s 2021 opus Any Shape You Take. You guessed it, Cook is credited as a producer on every track. He is alongside a crew of four for this record but you still hear his same proficiency to wrap around a pristine tone. On the heartbreak anthem “Darker Than Death” a repeated lyrical guitar strum feels like the cyclical nature of being lost in something wrong for you. Then the nerve filled electric barrage that enters on the hook plays off De Souza’s effervescent croons like a cloud releasing lightning.
The album’s best song, “Hold U,” where Cook is listed in the producer credits first, is a synth centered wonderland of devotion. The bright and round keyboard hits propel guitar and bass flourishes that sound like falling into your lover's arms after a trying day. The bridge section is euphoria in sonic form. Cook and co lift head voice streams of vocal prowess via choppy yet warm guitar strums and atmospheric fills that feel like sunlight piercing through the end of a storm. The album as a whole transports to a world where fairies circle humans and protect them from their own worst instincts.
Going all the way back to the beginning of Cook’s credited career I found that he was one of two credited recording engineers on one of my favorite rock albums of all time, Rated R by Queens of the Stone Age. The band's vivacious debut was never quite duplicated and Cook also never worked with them again afterwards. I was introduced to this album by older coworkers at my high school restaurant job. I was taken by the album’s explosiveness that was balanced by its tracks filled with a vibey open road feel. Somehow both those energies felt cohesive and that’s definitely something to be credited to expert engineering.
Funny enough, Cook’s engineering hugged Josh Homme’s vocal stylings with the same effectiveness as with De Souza and McRae later on. He’s produced for many other significant artists, but these three albums represent how when his work collides with a singer at exactly the right time it can affect my ear with lasting impact.
Inside The Credits 058: Brad Cook- The Playlists