That’s what happened to Orlando artist Brittany Schweizer, a longtime local with some deep ties to the city’s music scene. Marriage whisked her away for a while, but divorce ultimately brought her back. Her new album, Julian Street Tapes, Vol. 1, is the sound of that situation, in the raw both sonically and emotionally.
“Yeah, it is honestly just the voice memos I recorded of everything I wrote when I moved back to Orlando solo post-breakup,” she says. “I think I wrote around 22 songs and this is the first round of some of them, all written in that first year back. They’re all just one-take performances of me in my bedroom or living room.”
Compared to Schweizer’s lusher previous recordings, this new work is stark. But it’s an apropos framing for one of life’s loneliest moments. Despite beginning production on the new material, she says, “It felt wrong for this chapter of my little life. So I decided to just dump them out into the world as is.”
Although it’s the quietest outing in her oeuvre by far, Julian Street Tapes, Vol. 1 is a watershed moment. Stripped of the stylistic affectation that usually goes into recordings, this collection lays it all bare, like an unblinking one-way mirror into Schweizer’s head and heart. From perspective to progression, Julian Street Tapes, Vol. 1 is as direct and straightforward as it gets. It’s a musical diary of a seismic personal passage. “Even the songs are ordered mostly along the timeline I wrote them after I moved in here,” Schweizer says.
Crestfallen first track “Julian Street” opens the album on its heaviest note. From there, the blackness gradually recedes and becomes nuanced shadows. In glimpses, the color even begins to find its way in. It never quite gets to a full sunrise, but that’s life. And life takes time.
Fittingly, Schweizer’s only accompaniment on Julian Street Tapes is herself on piano or guitar. As a result, the warmth and restrained strength of her voice are given room to breathe and radiate like never before. The emotions are weighty, but the soul she pours into tracing them turns the affair into a moving catharsis. At her most vulnerable and confessional hour, Schweizer delivers her bravest performance yet, one that openly bleeds from all the falls but still finds a way to get back up.
Now streaming everywhere and topping TLU’s Spotify playlist, Julian Street Tapes, Vol. 1 is an unvarnished chronicle of emotional reckoning and honesty. And it’s not over yet, because Volume 2 is due out in the coming months.
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This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2025.