I’m not sure, but I am beginning to believe the postman recently delivered to my door the single best CD I have ever received from an unsigned Chicago band. I have been covering the Chicago music scene for the past six years as a writer and have participated in it as a musician for two decades and I have listened to and given away a mountain of local records, keeping only a few. This one, however, will have to be pried from my grip. This one is by the band Braam. Their latest release, Gravity & The Right To Fly, is a straight-up rock and roll gem. The record is a concept album (remember those?) following three characters, James, Michelle, and Meadow, playing out their drama of life and love against the backdrop of our fair city. It is an ambitious record and one that goes against theme of attention deficit that seems to have taken over the music world. It is a record that requires more than a few listens to get. Each of those listens, though, pulled me deeper into the world of the record, and I don’t remember the last time that happened. Frankly, I am not through processing this music yet. This is not a collection of radio singles, although some of the tracks here would sound fine blasting out of the dashboard on a summer night. This is, instead, a song cycle or, as the band puts it, a story with guitars.

Braam is composed of three brothers who bear the name that was applied to the band (vocalist Tom Braam, bassist Mike Braam, and guitarist Scott Braam) along with drummer Peter Drefs, the lone non-relative. Their sound is singer/songwriter-based Americana with a little roughness left around the edges, sort of like The Eagles if Neil Young was in the band. The record has an old school 1970’s kind of vibe to it, but that may be due to the pacing of the disc as much as the playing. It seems designed to be listened to in a single sitting rather than a song at a time and that alone makes it different. Through it all, the songs are strong and are made stronger by vocalist Tom Braam and his rough-hewn but intimate delivery. He is not a technical singer, but his voice has a quality that is at once hard to describe and eminently listenable. The instruments all sound big, three-dimensional and, most importantly, live.