Arts Brief - Philippe Bronchstein ’10 releases second folk album “Men Who Share My Name”

Philippe Bronchstein ’10 has operated under an assortment of monikers during his four-year stint at Middlebury College, including Bearplane, Flannel Mammal, Philbronch (for the Twitter set) and Bronchstosaurus.

Okay, so while that last one might be a figment of this arts editor’s imagination, the others have slowly been adopted into the average Middlebury student’s lexicon. You may have attended a party deejayed by Bearplane or laughed aloud during lunch while reading Flannel Mammal’s most recent blasé fashion blasphemy.

Most recently, however, Bronchstein has been flying under the banner of Hip Hatchet, his solo folk music project. On Sunday, Hip Hatchet played a show in the Gamut Room to celebrate the release of his second full-length album, “Men Who Share My Name.”

The album, which is the result of two years’ worth of composition and nearly two semesters of recording, marks a new stage in the malleable musician’s career.

According to Bronchstein, completing the album felt “weird…like finishing a second thesis.”

“Men Who Share My Name,” the title of the album, comes from a lyric in “Small Hands,” one of the ten all-acoustic tracks on the LP. “Small Hands,” like many of the songs that Bronchstein composed for his follow-up album, is as dark in tone as it is rich in musicality.

The tracks on “Men Who Share My Name” could be described like a good wine — woody, rich, earthy, smokey and having a great deal of depth or body. Each song is carefully crafted, sometimes blending clarinet, bass, violin, bassoon, saxophone, piano and additional vocals in with Bronchstein’s standard acoustic guitar and bass clef, Papa-Bear timbre.

To accomplish this, he enlisted the help of friends — Eamon Fogarty ’11, Charlie Freundlich ’10, Sonia Hsieh ’10.5, Siobhan O’Malley ’10.5 and Elizabeth Bates ’10 all perform on various tracks.

Some might wonder at the drastic shift between the electronic, disco-inspired playfulness of Bearplane and the subtle, so-sad-it’s-good acoustic melodies of Hip Hatchet. Bronchstein likens it to having a “multiple personalities disorder.”

“Bearplane for me has always been sort of silly and really fun,” he said. “I just sort of happened to get into it, but I’m not that emotionally invested in it.

Last year I mostly worked on Bearplane stuff, but this year I was focused on Hip Hatchet.”

He explained that the change in musical genre depends a lot on how he is feeling at the time.

“It just sort of depends on what mood you’re in,” he said. “I definitely get into modes — I think that Bearplane is more satisfying on a very immediate level.

There’s nothing like playing a show to a hundred people who are dancing their drunken faces off, but Hip Hatchet is just emotionally much more satisfying.”

Following graduation, Bronchstein plans to tour with Hip Hatchet in the summer and continue to write and record music, because as he put it, “you don’t really have a choice whether you do it or not.” For the Bronchtosaurus, at least, writing songs will always be a necessity, not an option.