B-Side Guys

The concrete giants of Manhattan cast long shadows. Somewhere in their midst, Brian Halloran has been crafting songs for over three decades, watching trends flash by like taxi cabs while he remained steadfast in his pursuit of something more enduring. His forthcoming album “Disquiet” didn’t chase the zeitgeist—it waited for it, gathering strength over a decade of painstaking development.

Set for release May 13th, “Disquiet” stands as Halloran’s most ambitious statement to date: ten tracks deliberately constructed for spaces far larger than the intimate clubs that have hosted his performances throughout his 30-year career. This is music designed to fill arenas, to bounce off stadium walls and return transformed. It’s a bold pivot from the ’90s-influenced pop-rock intimacy of his previous EP “Four Orphans,” where songs felt like confessions shared across a small table. Here, Halloran broadcasts his vulnerabilities through megaphones.

“I wanted to make a ‘BIG’ album,” Halloran explains, and the proof lies in his influences: U2’s atmospheric expansiveness, The Killers’ anthemic drive, Muse’s theatrical bombast, and Foo Fighters’ raw power. But creating music of this scale presented technical challenges that ultimately led Halloran to enlist Ricky Watts—fresh from engineering Front of House for 30 Seconds to Mars—to remix and remaster the project originally released in a more modest form in 2020.

What emerges is a collection united by emotional and sociopolitical unease—hence the aptly chosen title. The album opens with “Straw Man,” where propulsive drumming establishes the record’s kinetic energy before giving way to soaring chorus architecture designed for audience participation. The production immediately announces its intentions: this is cinematic music, with guitars that don’t merely play but sweep across the soundstage.

“Emergency Room” follows with urgent storytelling about emotional triage, its title serving as both setting and metaphor for relationships requiring critical care. The layered vocal production creates a sense of voices in conflict, perfectly embodying the song’s central tensions.

“Bouncing off the Walls” delivers exactly what its title promises—a frenetic energy channeled through precision musicianship. Here, Halloran demonstrates his ability to maintain melodic accessibility even while courting chaos, a delicate balance that requires both conviction and craft.

The album shifts gears with “Sleepwalkers,” the first of two explicitly sociopolitical tracks. Rather than defaulting to blunt sloganeering, Halloran opts for dream-state imagery to explore collective complacency in the face of injustice. The production creates a hypnotic quality that mirrors the very somnambulism he critiques, making listeners complicit in the very phenomenon being described.

“I Feel Like I Should Like Your New Band” arrives as a welcome moment of levity, its tongue-in-cheek title belying sharper observations about authenticity and scene politics. Musically, it’s perhaps the closest connection to his previous work—a bridge between the intimacy of “Four Orphans” and the expansiveness of “Disquiet.”

The album’s emotional core emerges with “Another Room,” an International Songwriting Competition finalist written in response to Robin Williams’ suicide. Here, Halloran transforms specific grief into universal exploration of mental health struggles. The production creates literal sonic rooms—spaces that form and dissolve as the narrative progresses, with reverb and delay deployed not as mere effects but as storytelling tools.

“Late Night Drive” and “Wayside” form a complementary pair, both exploring moments of transition and reckoning. The former uses nocturnal imagery to examine life’s crossroads, while the latter confronts what’s been left behind in pursuit of forward motion. Watts’ production shines particularly on these tracks, with precise separation allowing every instrumental voice to contribute distinctly to the emotional landscape.

With “You’re Not Even Trying,” Halloran delivers perhaps his most direct challenge—both to a specific subject and to listeners who might recognize themselves in its unflinching mirror. The track builds to a cathartic crescendo that serves as penultimate release before the album’s conclusion.

“The Ramparts” closes the collection by returning to sociopolitical territory, but with a wider historical lens that contextualizes current unrest within cycles of conflict and resistance. It’s the perfect thematic conclusion to an album titled “Disquiet”—an acknowledgment that certain struggles never fully resolve.

The album’s visual identity comes via Amy Keenan Amago’s mixed media collage cover art—a fragmented, layered aesthetic that perfectly complements music built from emotional shards assembled into coherent whole.

Like the skyscrapers among which it was conceived, “Disquiet” represents ambition realized through persistence, technical expertise, and faith in architectural fundamentals. After nearly ten years constructing this sonic edifice, Halloran has created something designed to inspire that most precious of modern commodities: genuine awe.