David Franklin Courtright Shares Single “in a garden of love” (feat. Chrome Sparks)

David Franklin Courtright has shared his new single, “in a garden of love” (ft. Chrome Sparks), the latest track from his new LP, Brutal Tenderness, out August 8th via TODO Records. The soaring, moody track is a reflective meditation on a past relationship and its slow-burning, gradual ending.

Courtright explains:

“I wrote ‘in a garden of love’ earlier than most of the other ones on the record, not long after ‘my first love,’ and I feel they both share a dark, broody siblinghood that felt right to bookend the record right before the final dénouement. It was born out of something my former partner said about how love is a garden, and it must be tended to, otherwise it dies or becomes overgrown. I had this shoving feeling that our love was now in the dark forever, and how I felt that the garden we had built was slowly wilting as we let go of each other.

“‘Even a garden of love can wilt in the dark,’ is me sort of saying, even a great love takes a lot of work, a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and other bodily fluids, and even still the sun can go down on it.”

“in a garden of love” (ft. Chrome Sparks) follows previous singles “boy” and “feels” (ft. Julianna Barwick), which have earned praise and support from FLOOD, Brooklyn Vegan, Magnet, Earmilk, and more.

Brutal Tenderness, taken from a line in Frank O’Hara’s poem “River,” is the debut album of David Franklin Courtright. It is a work about radical tenderness and joy in the face of sadness, loss, and fear. Written and recorded over a span of eight years and three continents, the work seeks to explore the seemingly opposing forces (or bipolarity) of brutality and tenderness, to guide the listener through a deep-hearted journey of love and grief, of fractures and healing. It is a kaleidoscope of emotional and kinetic soundscapes.

Brutal Tenderness is a process of reckoning with a life as a queer boy who couldn’t pass and was never allowed to hide, of setting free that gleefully expressive cartwheeling child who was put into hiding, locked beneath a veneer of false masculinity, and entombed in a character to avoid persecution. It is a triumphant and harrowing reclamation.

David Franklin Courtright ‘Brutal Tenderness’ album artwork

The new record is a love poem to that child-self, and to the person today who can exist in these realms of sadness without the compulsion to run from them or bury or hide them from the world, and in that patient practice, can touch and inhabit and know those sadnesses while being able to also know and touch and inhabit joy, and love, and inner peace.

“In A Garden of Love” (ft. Chrome Sparks) by David Franklin Courtright is out today via TODO.

Release Shows:

08/02 – Los Angeles, CA – St. Athanasius Chapel
08/08 – New York, NY – Union Pool
08/14 – Atlanta, GA – Commune

Brutal Tenderness Track Listing:

1. my first love
2. your kiss is something
3. no sky
4. feels
5. like my wild woe
6. boy
7. devouring god
8. in a garden of love
9. deep
10. in a tangerine light