Though the Houston native and current New Yorker cut his teeth as the guitarist for punk rockers The Grimple Twins, his current incarnation is as an über-sensitive singer-songwriter in the vein of Elliot Smith, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright. Practically sighing his way through the lyrics of his melancholy and downbeat debut, I Will Live In Where Your Heart Used to Be (Feel Records), he makes Pagliacci the sad clown look like Roberto Benigni by comparison. Though he says that the mostly stripped-down, demo-like acoustic songs are inspired by the lives of his post-collegiate friends and not his own, you probably should still pack a Sam’s Club-size box of Kleenex to take with you to the show. Brock is currently knitting up Warm American Sweater, a more rock-sounding follow-up, for release next year.
This article appears in Dec 19-25, 2002.
