Blessed with a gritty voice and cursed (?) with an angry face, Bright has never been much good with social cues. You don’t have to guess what he’s thinking — ask him, and he’ll tell you in blunt terms.

His music works like that, too. It’s at once startlingly honest and thrillingly oblique. You get the immediate sense that this man’s mind is wired a little differently, and that his voice—throaty and husky, prodigiously loud when he needs it to be—is there to span the distance. To make you understand.

As frontman of The Great Enough, he’s been the herald and standard bearer of lush, dance-and-shout-inducing alternative rock anthems. In his solo work, he is a little more introspective, a little more relaxed, and a little more comfortable with blemishes.

His music has been compared to—or drawn fans of—Hozier, Gang of Youths, Counting Crows, The Avett Brothers, The Head and the Heart, and Elliott Smith.