David Franklin Courtright's Upcoming Album Brutal Tenderness

David Franklin Courtright plans to release his debut LP Brutal Tenderness via TODO, out August 8th. It is a work about radical tenderness and joy in the face of sadness, loss, and fear. Written and recorded over a span of eight years and three continents, the work seeks to explore the seemingly opposing forces (or bipolarity) of brutality and tenderness, to guide the listener through a deep-hearted journey of love and grief, of fractures and healing. It is a kaleidoscope of emotional and kinetic soundscapes. Album singles "in a garden of love," "boy," and "feels" (ft. Julianna Barwick), earned praise and support from FLOOD, Brooklyn Vegan, Magnet, Earmilk and more.

Brutal Tenderness is a process of reckoning with a life as a queer boy who couldn’t pass and was never allowed to hide, of setting free that gleefully expressive cartwheeling child who was put into hiding, locked beneath a veneer of false masculinity, and entombed in a character to avoid persecution. It is a triumphant and harrowing reclamation.

The new record is a love poem to that child-self, and to the person today who can exist in these realms of sadness without the compulsion to run from them or bury or hide them from the world, and in that patient practice, can touch and inhabit and know those sadnesses while being able to also know and touch and inhabit joy, and love, and inner peace.

David Franklin Courtright is an LA-based singer, songwriter, musician, poet, writer, and baker. Born in North Carolina and raised in Atlanta, David absorbed the eclectic range of musical influences the South had to offer, from Appalachian folk to Classic Rock Southern hip-hop.

As a child, David, who went by Davey, had a deep and mystical connection with the natural world and God. Raised in the Episcopal Church in Atlanta, David grew up knowing a version of Christianity that included queer people, and the head rector at the church (and David’s spiritual mentor) was openly gay. During this formative time in his life, he found that the queerest environment in his life was actually the church. A deeply sensitive and effeminate child, Davey, like many frilly young boys, grew up to learn to hide behind a shield of masculinity to survive. In many ways, his music is a continual dearmoring, a way of taking each layer of that scar tissue away and allowing himself to become even more vulnerable to the world. This is where he began to see how “brutal” and “tenderness” entwine.

In 2009, David began writing and recording under the moniker Suno Deko, which was the name he attached to early demos while living in New Delhi, India. For this release, David is stepping away from that project and releasing music under his given name. The reasons for this are many, but the main impetus was a desire to reach new levels of vulnerability and authenticity in his work—to be as sincere as possible. To do that he felt that a nom de plume stood in the way of that desire for connection and expression. In his striving for greater intimacy in the work, with the listeners and in the world, he felt it necessary that it come directly from him, no filter.

While making music under Suno Deko, David had the chance to tour Europe with Wye Oak and Angel Olsen, and has toured and played shows with Hundred Waters, Mitski, Moses Sumney, How to Dress Well, and Julianna Barwick. In 2014, he played the inaugural FORM: Arcosanti festival in Arizona. He has collaborated with Alex Somers, Chrome Sparks, Nicole Miglis (Hundred Waters), and more.

In addition to being a musician and singer/songwriter, David is a poet, writer, and baker, and is currently working on a historical fiction novel about his queer great uncle who was a hairdresser and served in WWII, and a book of poems written in the wake of his father’s death in December of 2024.