Brittany Ann Tranbaugh is a long-running singer-songwriter in the Philadelphia folk community. She’s been making music since she was a teenager, but the new project she put out earlier this year, Quarter-Life Crisis Haircut, is her first in almost a decade. It’s warm and wonderful, lyrically very witty and melodically very catchy. But it’s also quite intimate and honest, an open journey of love and friendship, loss and forgiveness, childhood heartache and queer self discovery. Tranbaugh’s influences stretch anywhere from The Indigo Girls to Dr. Dog to Waxahatchee to Big Thief, and her arrival back on the scene is most welcome indeed.
After the release of Quarter-Life Crisis Haircut earlier this year, Tranbaugh hit the regional music scene with her band, which joins her in the studio for this week’s Key Studio Session. On drums is Adam Shumski, on bass is Joe Plowman, with Kevin Brosky on lead guitar and everyone contributing vocals. The band shines in these performances — which feature Quarter-Life Crisis Haircut‘s title track and its single “Kiss You,” along with two unreleased songs — the back-catalog pull “Moving On,” which dates back to 2013, and the new and unreleased closer “Almost Ready,” an earnest burner built around a sparkling guitar lead from Brosky.