Rose Cousins Reveals New Album 'Bravado'

Watch the video for first single "The Benefits of Being Alone"

BY Sarah MurphyPublished Nov 7, 2019

Rose Cousins has announced she will release a new album titled Bravado on February 21 via Outside Music. For a taste, album opener "The Benefits of Being Alone" has also arrived with an accompanying music video.

The record marks the follow-up to 2017's Natural Conclusion and was produced by Cousins herself.

Recorded in Toronto, the album features a supporting cast including Joshua Van Tassel on drums, Robbie Grunwald on keys, Brian Kobayakawa on bass, Dean Drouillard on electric guitars and Chris Stringer as engineer. Tim Baker also co-wrote one of the songs on the album, "The Lullaby (My Oldest Love)."

The album opens with "The Benefits of Being Alone" and closes with a different rendition of the same song, dubbed "The Reprise." The bookends showcase the record's duality — as a press release puts it, it's a record "for those who struggle with loneliness and those wishing they had more time alone" and "for those attempting to make their hearts go in more than one direction and those trying to make it go in just one."

"I think about how we're so disconnected. I get sucked into my phone and forget to go for a walk because of this sense of obligation that I have that convinces me to get as much work done as possible," Cousins said in a statement. "It feels like we're not connecting in person as much as we used to and that we may be the loneliest we've ever been. We're missing what's actually happening, like, the earth being on fire. We get caught in the spin of comparing our lives to social media depictions, false standards of a good life. I've been thinking about how we must be getting close to a breaking point."

See the full tracklisting for Bravado below, where you'll also find the video for "The Benefits of Being Alone" directed by Shehab Illyas. Cousins also has a string of Canadian dates coming up, and the schedule can be found below as well.

Bravado:

1. The Benefits of Being Alone
2. The Expert
3. The Agreement
4. The Fraud
5. The Time Being (Impending Mortality Awareness Society)
6. The Din
7. The Return (Love Comes Back)
8. The Swimmer (To Be an Old Man)
9. The Lullaby (My Oldest Love)
10. The Benediction (A Good Woman)
11. The Reprise (The Benefits of Being Alone)

Tour dates:

11/08 Truro, NS - The First United Church For NSMW
11/09 Boothbay Harbour, ME - The Opera House *
11/10 Montreal, QC - Cafe Campus *
11/12 Troy, NY - Troy Savings Bank MusicHall *
03/05 Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall ^
03/06 Ottawa, ON - NAC Babs Asper Theatre ^
03/19 Halifax, NS - Rebecca Cohn Auditorium ^
03/20 Fredericton, NB - Wilmot United Church ^
03/21 Charlottetown, PEI - Confederation Centre of the Arts ^

* with Patty Griffin
^ with John Paul White

Tour Dates

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