Brown Eyes / Power by Don Glori

The first radio single taken from Melbourne/Naarm multi-instrumentalist Don Glori's forthcoming third album, Paper Can't Wrap Fire.

Art by Mr Bongo

On first listen, you'd be mistaken for thinking "Brown Eyes" is a straight-up love song. Yet underneath the uplifting soulful flavours and sultry vocals lies a deeper topic at play. It's a track that discusses the comfort of seeking and finding your community when you had previously felt like an outsider. As Don mentions, "This song is about feeling 'othered' in a predominantly white society like Australia. The first verse is about being tokenised/tolerated and having to stake your claim to a place at the table. The second verse and hook are about finding people who have a shared history with you and feeling at ease around them. When you meet another person like that, and you don't have to explain all the above, it's a comforting feeling."

The result is an empowering hit of jazz-injected soul nourished by a funk flavour. The track ebbs and flows between sections of sweeping tenderness and head-nodding, bassline-heavy grooves. Crisp swung drums, masterful keys, and those honeyed vocals from ML Hall, backed by lush harmonies from Ruby Dargaville, Isadora Lauritz, and Bianca Kyriacou, combine to send you cruising across the horizon.

"Power," on the other hand, was a song that Don wrote after being fed up with dealing with bad promoters and agents. It's a simple mantra - protect your power and energy and do what feels free and good. A playful composition, musically, it's divided into two parts. The first was inspired by Kendrick Lamar's "To Pimp a Butterfly" and the West Coast sonic world, delicately balancing the spiritual choir, ghostly horns, and jazz break intro. The song then morphs as it progresses, with the gravity that the choir once provided ripped away by the next section.

From sombre to cheeky, the group chant turns to a satirical hook from the opposite view of the cynical promoter. "Take your fee, take your seat, come on man keep it up, Take your fee, take your seat, come on man just shut up."

The song then breaks into a segment that nods to the Brazilian legends Azymuth and their 1977 track Tamborim, Cuíca, Ganzá, Berimbau. Alcides Neto, Robyn Cummins, and Al Kennedy provide the shimmering pandeiro, conga, and drum percussion rhythms, as Joel Trigg lets rip with a swelling Rhodes solo that crescendos to the finale.

Don Glori - Brown Eyes / Power
Release Date 26th March 2025
Label Mr Bongo

Tracklist
Don Glori - Brown Eyes (Feat. ML Hall)
Don Glori - Power
Don Glori - Brown Eyes (Feat. ML Hall) (Radio Edit)