emily jeanne brown - coaster

California-born/Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Emily Jeanne Brown announces her debut album Coaster, out July 8th on Sunken Living Room. Living in an organic cross-section of indie-folk and Americana, the record is a series of snapshots of a creative life — 11 songs that trace the transience of Brown's experience -- and arrive, with hard-won clarity, at a deeper truth: that home can be found within ourselves and our relationships, regardless of where we find ourselves in the world.

In mid-2025, Brown packed up her Brooklyn band and headed to a house in the woods of New Hampshire to track the group in the childhood home of producer Nan Macmillan, engineered by Evan Dibbs. The result of that session would become the sonic and emotional heart of the record; a dynamic, live rhythm section, lush doubled acoustic guitars, warm piano and searing electric guitar tones that lay the foundation for Brown’s potent storytelling. The songs on Coaster encapsulate the sound of a woman at a turning point in adulthood, with a tracklist that invites the listener to reflect on their own journey toward a felt sense of belonging.

The title track “Coaster” opens the record, welcoming us warmly into the sun-drenched,

Beck-influenced sounds of the west coast, where Brown spent her childhood. Evoking melancholic imagery of the “morning blue”, flying planes and the golden hills of California, the song poses a question that stays with us for the rest of the album: will I ever find my place?

Brown further contemplates distance not only geographically, but also interpersonally, on “Two Ships”, co-written by and featuring Joseph Terrell (of the band Mipso). “We wanted to explore how silence in a relationship can be estranging,” Brown says, “while also considering how silence can be a way to build intimacy in an over-stimulated world… like two sides of a coin.”

On “Caretaker”, that intimacy is on vulnerable display in a heartfelt ode to healing within a romantic relationship. With a slow folk-rock groove, gritty guitars and a plucky banjo reminiscent of Waxahatchee, Brown’s unaffected alto entreats a loved one to lay down the burdens of their past, so they can find peace in the present. “Did you think the future would come falling in your lap, or somebody would show the way like lines upon a map?... I know it’s hard sometimes to find a new way home, but you don’t have to walk alone.” With “City of Stone”, Brown brings us

full circle to the euphoria of feeling at home in a new place for the very first time. Co-written and produced by Deidre Muro (Deidre & the Dark, Savoir Adore), the triumphant closer leaves the listener with a sparkling indie-rock vibe, a sense of youthful optimism and reassurance that home is what we make it, and that true belonging comes from within.

After Brown’s minimal but visceral 2020 cover of Springsteen’s ‘i’m on fire’ garnered tens of thousands of streams, in 2024 Americana Highways praised her 3-song ‘Nina EP’ for “music that plays out in the imagination and vocals that sound like a songbird at dawn”. With her band, comprised of Eric Mendelsohn on electric guitar, Kate Victor on bass, and Alex Beckmann on drums, she has since shared stages with Brian Dunne (of Fantastic Cat), Katie Martucci (of The Ladles), Chris Trapper, Marty O’Reilly, Cut Worms and Hayley Hendrickx.