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Eric Michener has spent the better part of 30 years writing songs about Denton — its alleys, its cul-de-sacs, the neighbors he passes on his morning walks and the stories he imagines for them. On “Bravest Neighbor,” his eighth album as Fishboy, he turns that instinct into a full-blown concept record: 12 interconnected songs following a fictional North Denton neighborhood, where every character nominates someone else on the block as the bravest person they know, all framed in a notebook found in a little free library in someone’s yard. The narrators keep changing, and the bravery, it turns out, is never where anyone expects it.
It’s a fitting origin, because Michener has spent decades convinced that the whole universe he needs is within walking distance…