Brandes releases new single “Behind Your Eyes”

Music represents a new creative chapter shaped by a life of considerable change for UK-based singer-songwriter Brandes. Behind the name is Peter Bradley, an acclaimed author and former Labour MP who’s turned towards songwriting after years spent balancing politics, career and family. Drawing on personal experience, he views music as a space to reflect on love, loss, memory and identity, bringing a perspective informed by the different lives he’s lived. Even the name Brandes carries a deeper significance, reclaimed from his family’s Holocaust history and connecting his present artistic identity with a past that continues to hold meaning.

The sense of history gives Brandes’ songwriting an emotional context but his music avoids unnecessary embellishment and he places the emphasis firmly on the words, allowing personal observations and carefully considered lyrics to carry the impact of each song. Folk-inspired storytelling meets spoken-word influences, while delicate arrangements leave space for the details to shine brightly, with his half-spoken vocal delivery adding an intimate quality, making the songs feel like thoughts shared in confidence.

Brandes introduced himself in July 2024 with the single “Please Don’t Call,” beginning a run of releases that mapped out the direction of his songwriting. Three further songs followed before his debut album, The Distance Between Dreams, arrived in April last year. The record brought these elements together, revealing a vision built around lyrical contemplation, restrained instrumentation and an ability to explore the complicated emotions that accompany real life experience. Now, he’s preparing to extend that journey with his forthcoming second album, Still Life, scheduled for release in 2027.

The first showcase arrived with “Love In Two Degrees,” introducing the next chapter of the project and now his latest single titled “Behind Your Eyes” continues that progression, turning towards the emotional consequences of a relationship in which tenderness and desire exist alongside separation. Wrapped in a folk rock setting, “Behind Your Eyes” explores the distance that can arise between two people, both physically and emotionally. Its story centres on a love that carries genuine warmth but is ultimately shaped by the circumstances that life places in its path, resulting a reflection on the way relationships can change without entirely disappearing from memory.

Commenting on the release, he shares, “It’s a song about the anguish of a love lost not so much by its own failure as by the wedge that life’s circumstances can drive between two people. It’s about how the pain, though it diminishes with the passing of the years, never entirely disappears. Something always remains, unresolved, unforgotten and unforgettable.”

The song’s arrangement highlights that sense of fragility with sparse, tentative keyboard accompaniment joined by acoustic guitar, strings and percussion. Set up by soft key tones, the song progresses with Brandes’ trademark vocal style, delivering picture painting lyricism in poetic fashion above the strums of acoustic guitar. Developing with elegant strings and laid back percussive textures, his voice takes on a more melodic style, offering a truly heartfelt musical moment that’s original, timeless and highly affecting from start to finish.

As the lead-up to Still Life continues, “Behind Your Eyes” offers another indication of how Brandes is developing his songwriting. Its understated instrumentation and reflective storytelling place candid songwriting in the spotlight, allowing a complicated relationship to play out through carefully observed details. As he continues to go from strength to strength as a solo artist with a compelling sound, we can’t wait to see what Brandes has in store next on this exciting new chapter in his musical story.

Listen to Behind Your Eyes below

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