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Real Love

by beat radio

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    The 6th full-length album from Beat Radio, released via Totally Real Records.

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    25 hand-stamped, home-dubbed, mono cassette tapes in gold cases from Totally Real Records!

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  • Full Digital Discography

    Get all 16 beat radio releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Real Love, Everyone I Know, Just Holding On, The Freeway Divided Our Hearts, Take it Forever, singles/demos 2014, mixtape of a memory, HARD TIMES, GO!, hurricanes EP, and 8 more. , and , .

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1.
I was following a feeling I always had so much to prove Never stopped to look around me Until I had a lot to lose I was waiting for the summer I was been hiding in plain sight ` If I have a heart of darkness Can't I find a little light? And I wanted to tell you How I'm sorry for the way I let you down And I thought I could reach you But there is no way to turn the tide around Draw a map of my depression And pull back the satellite If I feel like half a person Can I find a little light To learn to love with total freedom Is my heart’s ambition Without need for validation And without condition I was moving in circles Just to feel like I’m alright for someone else And it’s taken a lifetime But I’m learning how to know that for myself Needed to walk away To save myself And sleep to dream of better days I've been conjuring Protection spells To keep the ghosts away I was following a feeling I always had so much to prove Never stopped to look around me Until I had a lot to lose
2.
I was on my way back home Tired of feeling so alone And my dissociation blues I don't even know what's true If I was the darkest one If I was the prodigal son Doesn't mean I'm all wrong Doesn't mean I don't belong I was hiding since I was a child And this storm was coming all the while Ocean in a paper cup Yeah I guess i fucked it up Golden age that never came Dreams that we let slip away I thought I was born like that Emotionally detached Hiding all the evidence Claiming it was self defense Then the sky was falling from above And I could see I hurt the ones I love Solo (verse) I'm so tired, I don't wanna fight I just wanna feel like we're alright Now the walls are closing in on me this is not who i wanted to be
3.
Radioactive 03:47
You were drawing a line you were lost on the astral plane you were out of your mind and you feel like your love’s in vain Now everything's strange And you feel like a passenger In the blood in your veins And you're not who you thought you were sometimes it feels like you’re just hanging on like you can’t make it back and the good times are gone and you’re biding your time with the ghost in the hall You’re asleep to yourself and you’re nowhere at all You were radioactive You were out of control Just fading away In a fight for your soul went away for a while and the world feels so different now and you’re starting again you’re afraid that you don’t know how And sometimes it feels Like they cut you in half Did your dream turn to dust? Did you look back and laugh? Will you come back to life? Is the wolf at the door? Could you be someone else? Just a little bit more? You were radioactive And its taken its toll But you’re learning to change And to make yourself whole It's a fight for your soul
4.
Real Love 04:19
I don’t know if there’s silver lining to this mess that we’ve been in it feels like we’ve got our head underwater and we’re trying to learn to swim but I still believe our love is forever it was written in the stars if we had the chance to start things over i’d see you for who you are I was lost in my own world and haunted by a memory i just wanted you to know that your love is safe with me we were so young then we didn’t know better maybe there’s still time build a new dream together we’ve got a real love sometimes it ain’t enough no matter what it takes i’m never giving up I remember all we’ve been through together i know we can’t go back again sometimes i just want to feel like you want me like you wanted me back then we made our plans to see the world but we never got that far one day you wake up feeling like you lost a part of who you are we were so young then we didn’t know better maybe there’s still time build a new dream together we’ve got a real love sometimes it ain’t enough no matter what it takes i’m never giving up
5.
Weightless 03:58
Everything I thought I knew was wrong I thought staying in between would prove I was strong All it did was make me feel alone Sinking like a stone I needed to learn how to disarm Weapons I was born with and the ones I took on Fighting with the ones I love the most Feeling like a ghost I’m weightless if just for a moment I sing just to know I’m alive You’ve gotta walk through the fire that’s what it takes for a love to survive I needed to learn how to surrender To reckon with the damage I’ve done I had to learn not to hide from the world I had to learn not to run It’s so hard to let things go But maybe we could take it slow I miss all the dreams we had And I can’t make it on my own Everything I thought I knew was wrong I thought staying in between would prove I was strong All it did was make me feel alone Sinking like a stone I needed to learn how to disarm Weapons I was born with and the ones I took on Fighting with the ones I love the most Feeling like a ghost I’m weightless if just for a moment I sing just to know I’m alive You’ve gotta walk through the fire that’s what it takes for a love to survive I needed to learn how to surrender To reckon with the damage I’ve done I had to learn not to hide from the world I had to learn not to run It’s so hard to let things go But maybe we could take it slow I miss all the dreams we had And I can’t make it on my own
6.
Family Name 03:38
I’m weathering the storm inside it comes to life when i close my eyes these things that I’ve been haunted by don’t go away even though i try i never had to learn to be good on my own ok with me the mistakes I’ve made and this psychic pain is a legacy in the family name And I know I fucked it up Feel like there’s no way back Maybe it’s ok I was walking on a wire And everything fell apart But I’m finding a new way i’ll take my time as the hour gets late survive this loss accept my fate rise up again find my friends who I used to be did I know you then? I’ve never known the way to be good on my own ok with me the mistakes I’ve made won’t be in vain or a legacy in the family name And I know I fucked it up Feel like there’s no way back Maybe it’s ok? I was walking on a wire And everything fell apart But I’m finding a new way And there’s something in my heart that needed to lose myself Maybe it's ok? I was walking on a wire And everything fell apart Now I’m finding a new way
7.
Is it getting darker now? Do you think we’re running out of time? Can we turn this thing around? Is it just a moment down the line? or a fatal flaw in our design? Did somebody miss a warning sign? Baby are you safe and sound? Can I get a message home to you? Are you going underground? Are your biggest fears all coming true? Do you think we're gonna make it through? Can somebody tell me what to do? (instro) Is it getting harder to pretend? Did you say goodbye to all your friends? Will it ever be the same again?
8.
Solid Ground 03:27
I needed time to walk alone So I could find my own way home If you don’t learn to heal yourself You end up hurting someone else I made my own creation myth Trying to prove that I exist An apparition in disguise Looking through someone else’s eyes I was afraid that if I let go of the story that I knew Along the way I’d get so lost I can't find my way back to you We had a way that worked before It doesn't work for us anymore If I can lay these weapons down Then I could be your solid ground If I could be that strong and kind We'll find a better way in time I know that we’ll be good again We’ve got a love that never ends The world will break your heart but we were born to see each other through And after everything the only one i ever want is you I never learned To understand the things I felt You stood by me When I gave up on my self I was afraid that if I let go of the story that I knew Along the way I’d get so lost I can’t find my way back to you The world will break your heart but we were born to see each other through And after everything the only one i ever want is you
9.
Lowlands 04:07
I said goodbye To what I’d known And to that high And lonesome feeling Into the night Out on my own Just trying to find Some kind of healing Wandering through the lowlands in my mind I don’t know if I’ll be back this time Those sleepless nights And warning signs I didn’t see The storm was coming Everything changed I was afraid All of the time Then I was running Through the lowlands far away from home I know what you carried all alone And I don't know If I could ever make it up To you But there’s a light That’s in your eyes Makes me believe Maybe there’s still time And in the morning when we rise We will be in Some other skyline And I don't know If it will be this way forever Sometimes I wonder how we ever got this far I know its hard But I can feel it getting better You've gotta learn to be enough Just as you are
10.
arrive from always we rise from fire and i can feel the spirit leaving through the wires it was a summer to start anew there were so many changes we were going through and looking back on what we lost felt like a river that we’d never get across A broken heart A tidal wave a list of things I failed to find the words to say I lost my way I tried so hard to not become the thing I hate but it’s not too late for me to show you that I can see you arrive from always we rise from fire and i can feel the spirit leaving through the wires it was a summer to start anew there were so many changes we were going through when you are born into a war you learn to fight and don’t know what you’re fighting for it took so long for me to see That I was nothing like the man I hoped to be I lost my way I tried so hard to not become the thing I hate but it’s not too late for me to show you that I can see you You were holding us together I was living in a trance Now I’m haunted by the feeling Maybe this is our last chance

about

On Beat Radio’s last album, 2016’s Take It Forever, bandleader Brian Sendrowitz offered up a succinct chestnut of self-examination: “I’ll always be that singer / Who sings the words like they mean too much,” Sendrowitz declared on the rousing “Song for Camden Power.” “That’s because the words always mean too much in my mind.”

For Sendrowitz—Beat Radio’s singer, songwriter, and only permanent member—that may well be a statement of purpose. Since starting Beat Radio back in 2005, amidst the halcyon days of NYC music blogs, Sendrowitz has excelled at writing open-hearted indie-rock songs that double as life rafts, carrying him through the tumultuous waters of adulthood, grief, and familial trauma.

You don’t juggle songwriting with raising five kids while recording demos in a laundry room if you don’t believe every word, and on Real Love, Beat Radio’s sixth album (and first since 2006 with founding member Philip Jimenez), it’s clear that Sendrowitz does. Songs ripple with catharsis and hard-fought empathy. Choruses reach out for understanding through the pain and disconnect. Put simply, it is Beat Radio’s best and most honest album yet.

“There was nothing to hold back anymore,” says Sendrowitz. “This whole record just feels like the record I was working towards my whole musical career. I went all in emotionally in a deeper way than I was capable of before.”

With a textured sound that splits the difference between lo-fi indie-pop, folk jangle, and emo vulnerability, Beat Radio grew out of Sendrowitz’s years as a mainstay in the early 2000s New York singer-songwriter scene. After growing up on Long Island playing in emo bands (one of which included a young Daryl Palumbo of future Glassjaw fame), Sendrowitz became obsessed with Bob Dylan and began performing in coffeehouses during college. In 2005, aiming to move beyond his folksinger origins and write anthemic pop songs with a more raggedy edge, he formed Beat Radio with producer/multi-instrumentalist Philip Jimenez (formerly of Wheatus).

The band’s 2006 debut, The Great Big Sea, attracted critical raves and drew comparisons to Neutral Milk Hotel and The Weakerthans. Critics raved, and major labels started calling. But Beat Radio’s momentum stalled when the original lineup disbanded in 2008. Over the next decade and change, Sendrowitz sporadically kept the dream alive in his basement studio while raising a family near the south shore of Long Island. New albums appeared intermittently, testaments to his eclectic influences; there was 2013’s Hard Times, Go!, which grew out of the musician’s obsession with Swedish pop star Robyn, and 2016’s Take It Forever, full of lo-fi reflections on an artist’s place in the world.

Real Love (out this fall via Totally Real Records) represents a new beginning. For one thing, it marks a reunion between Sendrowitz and Jimenez more than a decade after the latter’s departure. Sendrowitz describes their collaboration as “a trust exercise”; he would send over skeletal demos and, in the hands of Jimenez and his wife Kathryn Froggatt, they would blossom into ornate indie-rock gems. Real Love is flush with lush sonic flourishes—the rustling banjos on “Lowlands,” the climactic sax on “Radioactive,” the elegiac violins and layered harmonies on the title track—that rank it as Beat Radio’s most fully realized record yet.

At the same time, the record injects a new urgency into Sendrowitz’s songwriting, woven from several years of heartbreak and rigorous self-examination. “I think I had a very shallow narrative of my life. That just started to unravel,” the musician says.

In 2020, when Sendrowitz began writing Real Love, he felt his world tilting off its axis. A dear friend died unexpectedly at 37. Struggles in his marriage had come to a head, forcing him to question his identity as a husband and father. And, as the new decade began, Sendrowitz went through a painful fracturing with family, which resulted in him becoming estranged from his parents—a profoundly difficult decision that proved necessary for his emotional well-being.

With the help of therapy, Sendrowitz underwent a period of reckoning and painful growth. He took stock of his flaws and turned to music. Immersing himself in wide-ranging influences—from the grief-powered catharsis of Nick Cave’s Skeleton Tree to the rowdy emotional intensity of Irish folk music (The Pogues) to a playlist he jokingly describes as “baby-boomer midlife crisis music” (Graceland! Tunnel of Love!)—he used songwriting as a means to make sense of the chaos and to heal.

“The songs on this record are way more vulnerable and more connected to my real life,” Sendrowitz says. “I think I’ve learned how to be more emotionally honest as a person.”

On the stirring centerpiece “Family Name,” Sendrowitz confronts intergenerational trauma and what it means to accept a fraught family background (“The mistakes I’ve made and this psychic pain / Is a legacy in the family name”), while the jangly pop of “Protection Spells” finds the singer reflecting on a decision to sever family ties: “Needed to walk away / To save myself / And sleep to dream of better days.” “Solid Ground” is a somber meditation on a marriage strained though unbroken by crisis, while the immensely moving title track is the most honest kind of love song, which is to say, one that reckons with the difficulty of making love last across decades and life changes: “We’ve got a real love / Sometimes it ain’t enough / No matter what it takes / I’m never giving up.”

While that lyric was written for his wife, Liz, a similar sense of dogged determination describes Sendrowitz’s songwriting career. At 44, he knows he’s not a buzzy new band. But the songs have never felt more meaningful; the stakes have never seemed higher. “When I look at bands that feel like they started to coast, it’s because they don’t really have to prove themselves anymore. For me, I was just trying to go all in,” Sendrowitz says.

-Zach Schonfeld, July 2022

credits

released October 21, 2022

Produced, recorded, and mixed by Philip A. Jimenez at Milk House Studios, Huntington, New York. Additional recording by Brian Sendrowitz at Miracle Flag in Bellmore, NY

Featuring: Brian Sendrowitz - guitars, vocals / Philip A. Jimenez - drums, guitars, synths, vocals, percussion, banjo, bass / Kathryn Froggatt - backing-vocals, bass, tambourine

Additional contributions by: Tim Lannen - vocals on "Weightless" / Drew Danburry - saxophone on "Radioactive" / Bryan Bruchman - guitars on "Harder to Pretend" / Tom Urwin - bass on "Harder to Pretend"

Songs written by Brian Sendrowitz (Miracle Flag/ASCAP) except "Lowlands" written by Philip A. Jimenez (STRATOTONE MUSIC/ASCAP) and Brian Sendrowitz (Miracle Flag/ASCAP)

Mastered at Milk House Studios.
Photos by Mary Kate Gilroy

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Singer Songwriter Brian Sendrowitz has been crafting heartfelt, literate pop songs as Beat Radio since 2005.

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