Carter Brady Brings '90s Alternative Rock Back to Life on New Album 'Add To Cart'

Photo by Alexa Jae

New York-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Carter Brady has released his third full-length album, Add To Cart, a 13-track collection blending '90s alternative rock, grunge, and indie-pop with sharp songwriting and an honest perspective on navigating adulthood. Following his acclaimed sophomore album Shopping Cart, Brady expands his signature guitar-driven sound while examining the pressure to constantly chase success, stability, and personal fulfillment.

Opening with “Relief,” the album establishes its gritty foundation through heavily distorted bass and dynamic instrumentation. “Fake To Myself” leans into classic alternative rock energy, while “Home At 24” begins with intimate acoustic arrangements before erupting into explosive guitars and drums.

Throughout the record, Brady demonstrates impressive versatility. “Phase Of Summer” and “Open Cut With A Cold” embrace heavier textures, while “Idea Of Being Free” introduces brighter indie-pop influences. “Maturity” balances delicate acoustic passages with soaring choruses, and “Feels You” delivers a nostalgic nod to early-2000s alternative rock.

The album's underlying concept is particularly relevant to a generation overwhelmed by expectations. Rather than treating personal milestones as achievements to collect, Brady challenges listeners to reconsider what fulfillment actually means.

Written entirely by Brady and co-produced alongside drummer Sammy Wags, Add To Cart reflects his hands-on approach to independent music. Balancing a full-time marketing career while retaining complete ownership of his recordings and publishing, Brady continues building his career on his own terms.

Closing with “Found My Mind,” the album delivers a fitting message about finding clarity amid life's uncertainties. With Add To Cart, Carter Brady proves that alternative rock's enduring appeal lies in its ability to make personal struggles feel universally understood.

'Add To Cart' explores the pressure to constantly accumulate achievements, milestones, and validation throughout adulthood. As someone balancing a full-time career with an independent music career, have you ever felt that chasing success was actually getting in the way of enjoying what you've already accomplished?

100%. I think the modern grind—whether you’re juggling a day job or just trying to keep up with the never-ending social media content loop—trains you to always look ahead at the next milestone. You finish a record or any major life project, and instead of taking a breath, your brain immediately asks, 'Okay, what’s next?' I am definitely guilty of this in general, and I’ve come to recognize that I often keep a million things sitting in the release queue, ready to pull out of the demo phase.

Add To Cart (while the title is also meant to playfully hint at a continuation of the Shopping Cart album concept) came out of a realization that if you aren't careful, you spend so much time chasing this abstract idea of 'success' that you completely miss the actual experience of making the art and living your life. For me, the record was a way to pump the brakes and force myself to really live in the moment—enjoying the process of revisiting these Shopping Cart-era tracks I had been holding onto, and putting the absolute maximum amount of time, dedication, and effort into each one so they sounded even better than when they were first written a few years ago.

You wrote all 13 tracks and performed nearly every instrument yourself, maintaining an unusually high level of creative control. How do you know when a song is genuinely finished, and have you ever struggled with the pressure of being responsible for nearly every aspect of your music?

Knowing when a song is finished is a mix of routine and instinct. Once I have the core guitar, melody, and lyrics locked in, my workflow is pretty consistent—whether I'm in my basement music room ('Shopping Cart Studios') at my childhood home or in my city apartment. I’ll program iDrummer in Logic Pro, lay down some rhythm guitar, layer on leads or synths as ideas come, and top it off with bass—though nowadays I mostly track live drums with my main collaborator, Sammy, at his studio in upper Westchester.

Over time, the more you write in a style you're comfortable with, the sharper your instincts get about whether a track will emotionally connect. That said, when you're working solo—much like guys like Mac DeMarco or Kevin Parker—you can easily tweak a guitar tone or a vocal harmony forever because no one else is in the room to tell you to move on. Eventually, you have to accept that a song thrives on a little human grit and imperfection; if you polish every edge off, you lose the soul of it.

As for the pressure, I honestly don’t feel weighed down by it. Sure, I still get butterflies submitting a track to a live indie radio show with legit curators, where you feel a bit exposed. But when it comes to releasing a record like Add To Cart, I have a healthy confidence in it. Even if a certain percentage of people don't resonate with it or leave critiques on social media, I know there’s a big chunk of listeners who will appreciate it for what it is—and for me just being myself

Your sound draws heavily from '90s alternative rock and grunge, yet you're creating music for a generation experiencing an entirely different cultural landscape. What do you think artists from that era understood about authenticity and emotional expression that today's music industry might be losing?

Those bands from the '90s—whether it’s the bigger acts like Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Oasis, and Foo Fighters who cut through the mainstream, or the college radio alternative stuff—weren't afraid to push sonic boundaries or be unapologetically imperfect in a way that modern commercial music often struggles to be. They weren't trying to cater to algorithms or short attention spans; they were just trying to capture a raw human feeling. Listeners gravitated to that because people back then were living more in the moment, with the patience to just take an album at face value and truly absorb it all without caring about one wrong note or guitar hiccup.

That’s not to say there aren't still plenty of people out there who love phone-free shows, spinning an album front to back, and treating music with the same weight as phones, TV streaming, or the internet. There definitely are. But broadly speaking, everything today is so hyper-curated and polished to a sheen that it’s easy to feel like you’re interacting with a product or a commodity rather than a person. What that era understood is that people connect with flaws, grit, and emotional honesty way more than they connect with perfection. I’m not exempt from this in the slightest, so I’m just trying to bring a little more awareness to that—because, at least in my opinion, it still holds true.

You've built your career independently, funding your releases, establishing Shopping Cart Records, and retaining complete ownership of your masters and publishing. What have been the biggest sacrifices behind maintaining that independence, and do you believe more emerging artists should reconsider the traditional record label route?

The biggest sacrifice is definitely time and bandwidth. When you're entirely independent—funding your own releases and handling everything from the songwriting down to managing your brand and social media—you don't have a massive machine or a marketing department to lean on when you hit a wall, whether that's content fatigue (I never get tired of the actual writing process, just the social media grind) or budgeting out of pocket. It can be exhausting, and it takes a lot of personal sacrifice.

Still, keeping 100% ownership of my masters and publishing is non-negotiable for me. I’m fortunate to be in a position where I can stay afloat financially, and I’d much rather self-fund than ever be in debt to a label. I even registered Shopping Cart Records as a publishing company through ASCAP so that if a sync placement comes along, I’m already set up to collect on both the publishing and master sides. Would I tell every emerging artist to avoid the traditional label route? Not necessarily—every path is different, and there’s no single 'right' way to do it. But I would tell them to fiercely protect their leverage and ownership. Never give away the keys to your life's work just because someone offers what looks like a shortcut.

The album closes with “Found My Mind,” suggesting a sense of clarity after navigating uncertainty, expectations, and personal growth. Looking back at the younger version of yourself who first started pursuing music, what beliefs about success have you had to unlearn, and what does a genuinely fulfilling career look like to you today?

When you're first starting out, you think success looks like massive validation—Spotify editorial playlists, charts, numbers, talk show interviews, massive rooms, everybody telling you you've 'made it.' I’ve had to unlearn all of that. I've realized that if the things we often chase as artists come at the expense of our mental health and our love for creating, that's not actually success at all. To me, a fulfilling career in music today looks like waking up, writing something I’m genuinely proud of, putting it out and promoting it on my own terms through Shopping Cart Records, and playing it for rooms full of people who actually care about the music. If you can maintain your integrity and still connect with fans, you’ve already won in my book. The rest is just an added bonus!