Brad Barr wants you to lose your mind—but gently. On Queens of the Breakers, the third LP from The Barr Brothers, that suggestion isn’t just metaphorical. It’s practically a production strategy.
“The whole thing is kind of designed to remain in that trance kind of state,” Barr tells me. “Like, you’re not jarred out of it. You just stay in this warm place.” It’s not dissociation, exactly. More like a meditative fugue state you want to stay in, one scored by dusty grooves, spectral guitars, and the soft thud of existential weariness.
That feeling is especially potent on “You Would Have to Lose Your Mind,” a track Barr admits they tried to re-record in the studio but couldn’t recapture the “spookiness” of the original. That version was born in a lakeside chalet in the Quebec woods—30 minutes from the nearest town by snowmobile.
“We’d go in for a week with a bunch of food and no expectations,” he says. “Just play and see what came out. Some of the songs on the record—like ‘Queens of the Breakers’—actually come from those sessions. We were just trying to get reacquainted with ourselves after seven years as a band.”
Barr calls it “band therapy,” which sounds hokey until he describes the vibe: big windows, tall ceilings, total isolation, and one very creepy moment involving a drone hovering outside the studio. “We were literally in the middle of nowhere and suddenly this drone just floats by the window. I was like... what are they hoping to find?”
The album’s groove-heavy drone, inspired in part by John Cale and Mississippi Fred McDowell, isn’t just aesthetic—it’s practical. Barr says he was dealing with fatherhood-induced creative amnesia, trying to conjure meaning in the hours between diaper changes. “Once you have a two-year-old, all that existential crisis stuff starts to feel kind of trite,” he laughs. “You have to find new scenes and times to write. You can’t do it on your couch at 2 a.m. anymore.”
So instead of writing from the same hazy pool of self-mythology, Barr found himself turning to actual personal history—those formative, murky memories you never thought were shaping you. And while Queens of the Breakers sounds personal, its political edge sneaks in sideways.
Take “Kompromat,” a title borrowed before any lyrics were written. “Andrew just named it that, sensing there was something charged in the music,” Barr says. “I started writing to that feeling. It wasn’t consciously political at first, but then I realized—everything’s political now. Even what you eat, how you engage with media—it’s all wrapped up in it.”
“Ready for War” lands in that same macro/micro space. “You can zoom in close or zoom way out,” he explains. “It’s about personal consumption, but yeah, it’s about everything else, too.”
Despite the weighty themes and the looming sense of dread that permeates some of the album, Barr insists the process was rejuvenating. “It was healthy for us. We came in without songs and just played like it was the first time again.”
And if you’re wondering whether that therapeutic approach actually worked, Barr’s still not sure. “I’ve heard some props here and there,” he says. “But I’m still waiting for someone to tell me whether they really like it.”
Hey Brad—I liked it. Enough to play it on repeat until I forgot what time it was.
Listen to the interview above and then check out "Queens of the Breakers" below!
