Please Hold Me

Matt Braunger excels at finding the exact point where a grown man’s dignity completely disintegrates. On Please Hold Me, he leans into the transition from a messy, hard-drinking youth to the domestic stability of marriage, contrasting his wilder past with his current reality. His best moments come when he treats his own aging like a slow-motion car crash, particularly when explaining why his remaining single, hard-partying friends now feel less like peers and more like chaotic toddlers he is responsible for keeping alive.

The hour represents a deliberate return to basics for Braunger, who released this exclusively as an audio album in early 2020. Recorded over New Year’s weekend at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, Vermont, the set captures a loose, energetic club performance. Rather than polishing everything for a multi-camera television shoot, Braunger keeps the pace tight and conversational, allowing his self-deprecating storytelling to take center stage.

Much of the material centers on the awkward adjustments of his career and personal life, such as the panic of accidentally swearing on a Disney television set and his ongoing bewilderment at receiving bizarre texts from his aging parents. He also dedicates a memorable chunk of the set to former NFL star Rob Gronkowski, examining the athlete’s lovable, giant-golden-retriever energy with affectionate bafflement. The release through 800 Pound Gorilla Records marked his first pure audio-only album in over a decade, a choice he made to keep the focus entirely on the rhythm of the jokes rather than the optics of a stage production.