Best of What's Next: Findlay Brown

Hometown: London
Album: Love Will Find You
For Fans Of: Phil Spector, Buddy Holly, Camera Obscura

Getting steamrolled by a London taxicab a few years ago was, in a way, the best thing that could have happened to Findlay Brown. While recovering from the accident, the singer/songwriter experienced a kind of musical epiphany: He’d released his folk-tinged first album, Separated by the Sea, in 2007 but, laid up on a couch without access to his regular music collection, he found himself working through the family tree of 1950s and ’60s American pop. “I just got immersed in that period and fell in love with that sound,” he says. “The whole romance of it.”

Brown’s sophomore album, Love Will Find You (out now) takes a remarkable u-turn from the humble, acoustic sound of his debut. Donning a pompadour and layering up his tracks with a Spectorlike wall of sound, Brown traded in the simplicity of his first record for what he calls “an onslaught.” The album bubbles over with orchestral arrangements and vocals that have already drawn too many Roy Orbison comparisons to count, all grounded by Brown’s uncanny knack for vintage-styled songwriting. It would sound more at home playing on an RCA Victor radio than iTunes. “Really, the most important thing to me is writing good songs,” he says. “A lot of the songs I’ve fallen in love with have been from the Brill Building. The hits, you know? Those classic hits that are always going to be around.”

The title track of the new album fits in quite nicely among the hits of Brill writers like Burt Bacharach and Carole King, thanks in part to Brown’s refusal to add any modern twists to the classic style. His shift from sensitive, finger-picking folkie to gel-haired sockhopper caused some discord among early fans, but Brown insists it’s a far more accurate reflection of his tastes than his quiet debut. “People could just think that I’m jumping on the bandwagon, that this kind of ‘60s thing is in vogue,” he says. “But I’ve been obsessed with the ‘60s thing since I was a teenager, and I’ve finally made the kind of record that I always wanted to make.”

Brown—who once sold his Beatles autographs to buy a guitar after hearing a Jimi Hendrix song—will tour the US late this winter, and he’s thrilled. “It’s just a dream. All you have to do is listen to the record to hear that I’m obsessed with American music,” Brown gushes. “So bringing my music to New York, and the West Coast, and Memphis, and Nashville… This is just dream-come-true shit for me, y’know?”