‘in a garden of love’ David Franklin Courtright | New Album, ‘Brutal Tenderness’
David Franklin Courtright returns with his latest single, ‘in a garden of love’ (ft. Chrome Sparks), a cinematic, slow-burning meditation on intimacy’s fading edge.
It’s the newest taste from his debut LP, ‘Brutal Tenderness,’ arriving August 8 via TODO Records. The track swells with moody textures and emotional undercurrents, capturing the melancholic unraveling of a once-vibrant relationship. “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,” Courtright shares. “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…”
That ache is crystallized in his haunting lyric, “Even a garden of love can wilt in the dark,” a line that distills the album’s core ethos: love, even at its most profound, isn’t self-sustaining—it demands effort, presence, and often, painful surrender.
Building on the buzz of earlier singles ‘boy’ and ‘feels’ (ft. Julianna Barwick), ‘Brutal Tenderness’ is a sprawling, kaleidoscopic debut. Written across three continents over eight years, it’s a reclamation of queer identity, a eulogy for innocence, and ultimately, a love letter to the self—”a triumphant and harrowing reclamation” of the boy who once had to hide.
Headline photo: David-Simon Dayan
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