"Touchdown"
(Fat Cat)
six / ten
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BRAKES "Touchdown" (Fat Cat)
six / ten |
Picture the scene. It's the Sunday night of Electric Picnic 2006. The Pet Shop Boys are performing their camp cabaret show in dayglo military fatigues to an uproarious tentful of festival reprobates. Meanwhile, squired away on one of the smaller stages, the unheralded Brakes, burdened with a curious time slot, perform to maybe fifty clearly contented souls who bound about irregardless in the spacious arena to their classic belter 'All Night Disco Party' off their barnstorming debut Give Blood.
Two albums later Brakes profile is still non-existent, and they remain a band destined to be an acquired taste. It could be singer Eamon Hamilton's abrasive timbre, their now heavy brand of crunching rawk, their countryish meanderings, but the roughneck charm of Brakes is also their Achilles heel. They are a band out of place.
Touchdown is certainly a solid album from Brakes, but it lacks the eccentricity and skittishness of their debut. Big, raucous guitars bludgeon the listener into submission on 'Don't Take Me To Space (Man)' and 'Hey Hey' but the songs lack finesse and give off too much of a whiff of boorish American style punk.
In contrast the buoyant 'Worry About It Later' is practically twee in comparison with its jaunty melody and chiming lead guitar. Similarly affecting is the melancholy closer 'Leaving England', with piano flourishes adding further layers to the Brakes' sound. A band of contrasts then, but with Brakes it is always thus.
Mark Keane
www.myspace.com/brakesband
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