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Drowned In Sound interviews of 2006 Twelve whole months of DiS running about the country, up stairs and down basements, into hotel rooms and outside into pub gardens, chasing bands. It's what we do, so that you don't have to. Here, as an end-of-year special, we've collected some of our favourites: Brakes: They are from Brighton! They play rock music, really fast! We like these things! They have arcade machines on the pier, you know... |
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We met the band at the end of October 2006 in a pub off the Edgware Road, prior to their gig at Trash. SXP: The sense of anger in the music and lyrics is particularly strong on this record, from the first line of the first song: "woke up late and found my liberty lost". Eamon: It's just a reflection of the times we live in. There's a war on! Tom: You can't make a record at this point in time and not address it. SXP: Not many bands do that though. Tom: I think there's a lot but in mainstream music people prefer something that's wallpaper. Easy on the senses. Marc: Pop music's become something to take your mind off issues. Eamon: I can't believe bands are doing it as well. It seems just important for bands nowadays to look and dress and sound the same. State of the world, how we going to sort it out? Rock music! SXP: The war theme is repeated in Cease and Desist where it's all a game between God and the Devil. Eamon: That was from the book of Job! You know the bet they had to screw over Job's life? I thought it'd be funny if the devil won! But it's just people taking bets on god: you know, my god's better than your god: let's kill each other! Alex: My favourite thing about Cease and Desist is the musical representation of that, which was a complete accident. In the track, where the devil wins the beat goes backwards. The point it reverses, is where the Devil just won and then it's back to front. The Devil takes the front snare and then by the end God gets it back in the last second. It's a photo finish. Tom: The god beat wins! Marc: Doesn't the earth blow up? Eamon: Yeah it ceases to exist. SXP: But it's not all doom though? Eamon: Oh, no people are still falling in love, while there's this war. That's the point of this album. SXP: Is it easier now in Brakes as Eamon's no longer in BSP? Marc: It's easier physically yeah. Not so knackered. SXP: And are Tenderfoot still sort of together? Marc: We're ...parked. We're kind of going to get another album together in the course of next year. We don't hate each other. We're cool. Alex: Slow recovery from major label. Takes a while! Tom: I'm not really a fan of time off. What's the point of being in a fucking band if you prefer time off to being on tour? *laughs* SXP: Is there any career plan for Brakes? Alex: A few months in advance. When the band started it was "whenever". Every few months, we'd rehearse or play a gig or something. But then it got more serious when we were signed. Eamon: Our aim is to create records you can still listen to in 40 years, well, it's not an aim, we haven't actually talked about it yet! *laughter* That you can listen to in a number of years' time and still enjoy it. Tom: If something's still relevant in the future, whenever that is, 5 to 10 years, and if it doesn't embarrass you, then I reckon it's all you can ask for. SXP: Do you have the last say in how it sounds? Alex: Personally? Yeah! In terms of being left alone, yeah, every time. Rough Trade's great for that. None of that fingers-in-pies stuff. It's: get on with the record, we trust you. Deliver the record, we'll put it out. The best track on the album is Hold Me In The River; it jumps out at you precisely because it hasn't been pushed around using ProTools and edited and made to sound perfect. It's because that is the first take. Put it down, we've got the vibe, does it work? Yes! There's no fiddling with it. Know what I mean? |
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I move conversation on to the sound of the new album. Marc explains: "We wanted to spend a bit more time on it and make it sound a bit fuller (than the first one). We went into it without really knowing what it would turn out like and we're pretty happy with the way it's worked out. I like going into recording sessions completely blind and bashing something out. So much music is made these days making things perfect, correcting things. Four people in a room are going to produce something unique, that you couldn't reproduce. A lot of the stuff on the new record is totally live." The result is raucous, passionate and tender, sometimes in the same song. What I see is a band full of contradictions: creative, destructive, very wary of labeling themselves. Never far from the surface is an impulse to eviscerate expectation, shred soundbiting. "Death-Barndance" is how Marc and Eamon glibly describe their sound. It cracks us all up. Me because I thought "country-punk" was funny. So this means a kind of morbid, hay-strewn fandango, then? I ask. "Something like that" comes the chuckled answer. |
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Being members of other established bands, did it take long to gel as a unit and get your own sound, distinct from your other projects? Tom: Yeah, it was certainly something that we didn't want to be in anyway comparable to our other musical interests, which is why I think it works. There is a wealth of writing talent in the band, who does what in a songwriting sense? Tom: Eamon comes up with vocal melody, lyrics and a basic arrangement on acoustic guitar, then the rest of the band jam that 'til it all starts to sound like Brakes! What would you say are the main differences between your first album and The Beatific Visions? The new one's more refined, sounds better, we sound tighter, the sleeve's better, it was all round a more relaxed experience, better lyrics, more of a concept... shall I go on??!! What would you consider to be the crowning glory of modern civilization? The electric guitar, of course! |
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Eamon Hamilton took time out before a gig in November at Boddington's Brewery in Manchester to speak to Pennyblackmusic outside in the freezing cold, with only a cup of tea to get us through. Some quotes: PB : Going back to Brakes, you've all been in other successful bands before and some of you still are. How have you found balancing the responsibilities there? EH : I had to leave British Sea Power in the end just because I did nearly 300 gigs in 2005 and it just almost killed me. Brakes were offered the Belle and Sebastian and Editors tours at the start of the year. I didn't really want to take all that time away from British Sea Power so that's why I left. But Electric Soft Parade are releasing an album soon. They're going strong and the Tenderfoot are doing really well. PB : That's good, Brakes seemed to be a kind of a side project but it seems like a lot more now. At what point did you find it became serious? Was that when you started the touring? EH : I suppose so. We realised that we were a good band and we were making music that we wanted to hear, you know. We've been going for four years now. PB : On the new album the lyrics move between the personal and the political. Are you interested in politics or is it when things happen that you feel you need to write about it? EH : It's more of a reaction to what's going on, what you read in the news. You can't really escape politics, can you? It's one of those things - it governs your life. So yeah, I am affected by it and lyrically I kind of reflect that. PB : On some of the tracks on the album you come across as somewhat anti religion as well. EH : It's the structure really and the fact that a lot of people at the moment seem to be using the concept of God as an excuse to be inhuman towards one another, whereas I come instead from a humanist background. People should appreciate that they're alive at the moment and try to do the best that they can whilst they're alive rather than killing each other in the hope that you'll get bonus points in heaven. None of us really know if heaven exists. What we do know exists is the fact that we're alive at the moment. |
| TuneTribe Here, they tell TuneTribe about the songs which have inspired their particular brand of jarring, psychedelia-laced guitar pop... On second album 'The Beatific Visions', Brighton's Brakes have allowed a hitherto unexpressed tenderness to colour their raucous avant-indie, with songs such as 'If I Should Die Tonight' and 'Isabel' adding a dash of sentimentality to the gloriously noisy proceedings. But don't let that fool you - they're still as satisfyingly unhinged as ever. Bassist Marc Beatty told TuneTribe about the tracks which have soundtracked their journey thus far... |
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How did the recording sessions for the new album go? Hot. We recorded the album in Nashville, Tennessee, in the early summer heat with fireflies buzzing around. It's a city, but feels more of a town. We played some shows and were welcomed with open arms by the music freaks there. We were flying, composing new bits, new songs and re-arranging the songs we knew, which gives the album some of its spontaneity. We mixed it in Radiohead's demo studio in Sutton Courtenay, a village in Oxfordshire, during the UK's heatwave in July. What goals did you set yourself before you started recording? To get it a top five hit album. And to make a record we could still listen to with pride in forty years. What do you feel are your own limitations when it comes to creating/writing music? We're still learning, which is one of the greatest pleasures of being alive. Tell us 3 of your favourite songs from your career and the inspiration behind them? Career? Favourite? Both terms are a bit meaningless to us; we're proud of every tune we've written and I've always thought a career involved some sense of knowing what you're doing. I'll explain three of our songs for you though: Comma, Comma, Comma, Full Stop from our first album Give Blood, was a collaboration between the four of us. I wanted to write a song with no words but that reflected how lives have markers of experience, and then just stop. I decided to just sing the punctuation marks of a sentence, leaving the listener free to insert their own words. Cease and Desist (from new album The Beatific Visions) came about from jams and hard riffing. The lyrics are based on the Book Of Job, in the Old Testament, in which God and Satan convene to fuck up Job's earthly life to test his faith. I thought I'd re-write it so that a drunken, gambling God ends up losing his children to Satan. Hold Me In The River (The Beatific Visions) came from the heat of Nashville. It is a reflection of how the concept of God is currently being used by people to be inhuman towards one another, and it name checks Scarlett Johansson. What do you enjoy most about recording, and in contrast what do you enjoy most about playing live? There's a magic in both. In recording it is the knowledge that what you are putting down on tape will be a permanent record of that moment, that instant, so it had better feel right to you, the room should have some buzz in it. Live, the reaction is instant, and you get to see how these songs affect people in the same way that they affect us. What are the bands plans for the rest of the year? Well, hopefully we'll be touring for most of it. We get kind of bored at home. How would you describe your own/bands sound? Guitar based. Who is currently moving you musically at the moment? Camera Obscura- Let's Get Out Of This Country. Cat Power's album- The Greatest. Sunn o))) and Boris- Alter. What album changed your life and why? The Jesus and Marychain's album Psychocandy changes my life every time I listen to it. A moment in your life and a song that seem so perfectly intertwined in your memory? I remember driving back from an outdoor rave with The Allman Brother's Blue Sky (from the album Eat A Peach) blasting out, and thinking that life was a pretty damn good thing to be living. Your proudest achievement so far? As a band, recording Give Blood and then finding it being awarded the Rough Trade Shop's number one Album Of The Year, we were pretty humbled by that one. If you could erase one single/album from history (your own or someone else's) which would it be and why? You can't do that- that's like burning books. How do you see yourself altering the band and your sound in the future? We'll know that when the future gets here. Is there anything you wish to attempt in the future that's inspiring you right now? I'd like to be able to move inanimate objects through mind power alone. Harry Potter can do that. What drives you? We've just bought a long wheel based Ford Transit van, so we drive ourselves. What are your fears? Monsters. The revolution comes, who would you like to be first against the wall (and if you're feeling particularly bitchy, a second, third, fourth and so on...)? If there was a revolution, wouldn't the wall have been torn down? If it hadn't been, it'd have been the wrong type of revolution, and it'd probably be us against it. Best piece of advice you'd give to aspiring musicians, or the best piece of advice you were given when you started? Be good. If you're in a car going at the speed of light, and someone turns the headlamps on, would they do anything? Probably attract moths. |
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Our Brake with Cerys I can't imagine Cerys Matthews cooking a Sunday roast and playing mam to any old itinerant indie bands who dropped by her old Nashville home. Matthews may have replaced her hard-living rock star lifestyle with contented motherhood and wifedom but something about that image still jars. Yet that's the picture of domestic coziness painted by Eamon Hamilton, vocalist with Brakes, who stayed with Cerys and hubby Seth Riddle while they recorded their new album The Beatific Visions. "Actually it was Seth making the Sunday dinners" Hamilton laughed. They released their debut album Give Blood in July 2005 and with 16 songs clocking in at just 29 minutes it showcased their ability to spit out incredibly concise shards of urbanised indie. It was a record that impressed Cerys' producer husband Riddle. "Seth saw us play in Texas and invited us out. We spent pretty much every night sitting on their porch in rocking chairs, watching fireflies. There were constantly musicians dropping by to jam, like a musician's perfect dream, and Cerys sang these beautiful folk songs" In recording The Beatific Visions, Brakes shared some of the personnel Cerys used on her album Never Said Goodbye, including producer Stuart Sikes. "Stuart is this big Texan who just doesn't take any nonsense. We'd do something really well and he'd just say (adopts deep-voiced drawl), 'Y'all need to do that again" So given the setting and personnel, how much country influence crept into Brakes' very British indie squall? "There are actually quite a lot of country influences on Brakes so it was nice to go to the home of real country music. Country music in America has become mass-produced rubbish, sort of like hip-hop has become, so it was good to try and do it properly with a lot of old faces. We took about 70 per cent of the material with us but we wrote there too and the single Hold Me In The River came out of that writing. We were there for three-and-a-half weeks and the heat affected the record more than the area or people. The songs are either very relaxed or very angry from being too tired and too hot" At least they'll be acclimatised to the heat for their date at The Point tomorrow. "Cardiff's always rowdy, a real party city. I remember leaving our last gig at Clwb Ifor Bach and when we came out there were some mates trying to push each other around" |
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There's always a big element of fun running through your music but you pack it with politics, too. What has concerned you enough to write about this time, for The Beatific Visions? We're in pretty dark times at the moment and it's like a reflection, really. I'm not a big fan of war let alone the reasons and justifications for it, which seem to hinge on some idea of a God, and it's that that I'm trying to explore. Each side uses their God as an excuse to be inhumane to each other. That is a large and controversial subject. How did you begin to tackle it? I went away to Morocco and, while I was there, read a book called The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. It's a brilliant book set in the 1920s, about how the Devil comes to Moscow and how he just creates havoc. It's one of the best books I've ever read. That influenced the song 'Margarita', but I was reading the Old Testament as well, that I'd never read. One of the stories that really stood out was that of Job. It's about what happens when God and the Devil get together to have this bet to mess up this guy's life and test his faith. In our song, 'Cease And Desist', I use that idea but let the Devil win instead. Sounds like you've had enough of writing about the usual subjects? Ha ha, people are still falling in love, which is brilliant, so some of the songs are about love and the benefits of love, really. Does that cool pub gambling room pictured on your cover actually exist? It looks like a film set that's been constructed to look uber-authentic, and I can't work it out. Yes, it is real. It's called Trisha's and you can find it in Soho. It's been in this same Italian family since the 1940s and it's one of those late-night drinking places. You recorded this album in Nashville with Stuart Sykes, who has also produced The White Stripes and Cat Power. Did that experience have a marked effect on the way everything came out and how you approached actually making the album? With this one, we were still rearranging the songs and coming up with better ways of doing them as we started. We also had a producer who was a bit of a taskmaster and he made us do take after take. So yeah, it was a different approach to recording and we took more time over it, like two and a half weeks. It was a luxury! America and Nashville seeped into our consciousness and we had a brilliant time there. Not only that, but one day while we were recording Cat Power called by. Wow! |
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Read the Q&A Eamon did for the Album Chart Show and there's a new interview at The Skinny Fresh from the release of their second album, The Beatific Visions, Brighton quartet Brakes took time out to chat to The Skinny about blagging, the Bible and scary porcupines. Rock on. "After Give Blood (the band's debut), we kind of imagined that would be it, but then Rough Trade came back to us and asked if we'd like to do another record," explains ex-British Sea Power keysman Eamon Hamilton. "Initially we thought shit yeah! and then we were like ****, we've got no songs! It wasn't a problem in the end though, although I still feel like we're going to get found out, but everyone seems happy with them so I guess the blag goes on!" Certainly the Brakes' laid-back approach to composing hasn't hindered their creative ability - the tunes on show here are, if anything, more accomplished than their acclaimed debut in that they brim with vivid honesty and unashamed passion. "The lyrical honesty was definitely intentional - it's a reflection of the past year's news and personal matters." There's also no shying away from some of the bigger issues. "I despise the way people get killed in the name of some concept of God and how this belief prompts some humans to become inhuman - it's incomprehensible to me." Indeed, Hamilton took to reading the Old Testament in an attempt to understand things further. "It's heavy stuff man, it's basically just a set of lists and stories of God and the Devil battling over people's consciences. It certainly inspired some of my songwriting." Amongst the at-times brutal honesty of the new record (see album closer 'No Return' for a graphic heartbreak) there's also time for a number of obscure references on the new record, none more abstract than the frenetic 'Porcupine or Pineapple'? "They're both spiky, so which one's worse?" After much deliberation and the application of a little common sense from The Skinny, the porcupine's ability to move wins the day. Planet Brakes seems quite a pleasant place to be on right now, with the Brighton scene, of which they're a major part, booming and the Beatific Visions being welcomed throughout. The band has also just played a support slot at the Academy in Glasgow with one of the world's biggest draws at present - the Killers. So can the Brakes do big audiences? "We just love playing music to people, so the more the merrier. We were thrilled to be supporting the Killers, we really admire their style, not using any backing tracks and all that. It's really impressive." With their stock rising within the industry and demanding record companies seeking new tunes to order, how will the Brakes cope? "I find songwriting quite a traumatic experience, so having deadlines is good for me - it prevents extending pain!" And so the honesty continues. Them's the Brakes. |
"People's reactions certainly made us take another look at the band. They made us think, Oh right we are a good band actually. We weren't hearing the music we wanted to hear so we decided to make it ourselves. The Killers tour is an amazing thing to get. They just rang us up and asked us to support them. We're really excited about it as these venues are full to the brim with people. A big rig for our big sound"On recording The Beatific Visions: "Before we knew it we were making another record! This one took longer than the first - but only two weeks! We'd been introduced to Stuart at South By South West by Cerys Matthews' husband Seth Riddle. Stuart is a big Texan who didn't say much except for no or do it again. We'd gone there with just 70 per cent of the album written so it could be quite unnerving at times. Though, at the end, when he said yep that's the one, we realised he liked us a lot. Nashville was inspiring. We had all these musicians who had played with legends coming in to hear our songs" So are they now a bit more used to being called a supergroup? "Well we are four super guys in a group but we've never felt like a supergroup. I always thought being a supergroup was about massive egos and snorting cocaine all the time. That's not us at all" This time around they recorded in Nashville at House of David, the studio owned by David Briggs, once Elvis Presley's pianist and a local fixture. Briggs started out in the Muscle Shoals rhythm section and even backed the Sixties star Tommy Roe on a trip to the UK with a Liverpool band. Eamon: "He had some good stories about going on tour with the Beatles. He went to George Harrison's house and kept finding rooms Harrison hadn't even been to. He was saying: these are really great songs, and to hear that from a man who played with Elvis and Sammy Davis Jr is pretty cool" Briggs is right. The title track and the heartbreaking closer No Return are worth a thousand overlong CDs. Tom: "I think we are quite a traditional set-up. There's no style here at all". Eamon: "I'm realising more and more that we are an old-school band. The Nashville players really appreciated that, I think. We are what they were" They seem to exist in a world apart from conventional bands. No wonder the Killers, friends since touring with British Sea Power, appreciate them enough to invite them on their current tour. Eamon: "Right now bands have become more of an insular commodity. If you don't hear what you want to hear, you have to make it yourself. Brakes fills the gap" Tom: "A lot of bands are too happy to be told what category they fit in. But I don't think we can. We don't look right for this era". Eamon prefers to quote the old Kit Kat advertisement: "You look bad, you sound terrible - you'll go a long way" he laughs, not caring. |
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The Beatific Visions is quite a grand title. Do you think the album lives up to it? "The title is a play on how the concept God is being used as an excuse to inflict inhuman acts on humans at the moment. The songs all reflect this in some way" There's such a wide variety of tunes packed into the album, which is your favourite? "I can't pick a favourite - I love them equally. Each song" The Beatific Visions is even more spiky than Give Blood. Is this a trend you'll be following? "Like Robert Frost pointed out in The Road Less Travelled, following trends leads to a dull life. We don't have a set of rules for what is or is not a Brakes tune, which leaves us free to make whatever songs move us" There's a lot of social and political comment in your work, do you see yourselves as a political band? "No, I see us as a human band, but I also see that we are going through one of the most politically sensitive eras in living memory, and that our work reflects this. I don't think art can exist outside of the social situation it was created in, and the political upheaval in our current society is too overwhelming to ignore" |
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Eamon talks to Crud Magazine There's a mini album review too... It's feverish, it's vital, it's cantankerous, it's wretched and yet it comes freewheelin across the stereo with a tenderness and a sweetness hitherto unimagined. If I Should Die Tonight breezes by with the twangy jocularity of a line-dancing Frank Black, Mobile Communication evokes the whimsical technophobia of Sophtware-era Grandaddy, Isabel is waiflike acoustic magic, and No Return recedes into the ether like some weary damp-eyed whisper. That's aside to all the preposterous punkery of Porcupine or Pineapple and the sheer beatific joy of Beatific Visions. Who chose the producer for Beatific Visions? Geoff Travis suggested Stuart Sykes, who was great, a big silent Texan with amazing ears. He got us hammering out each song until we got it right, and we trusted him implicitly with his decisions. It all worked out. |
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The new album, The Beatific Visions, came out on Monday and seems to have quite a pedigree in terms of the personnel involved - it was recorded in Nashville at the House of David studios, home to records by JJ Cale and Elvis Presley. How did all of that come about? Was it deliberate, or the result of good fortune? Good fortune! We met the producer Stuart Sikes at South By Southwest and he wanted to work with us. The strength of the pound against the dollar meant that it would be cheaper to record it over there. We had a great time. How was the recording process for you guys? I read that some of the songs were written from scratch in the studio - did this prove difficult, or inspiring? We had about 70% done, so we needed to do a few more in the studio. We're very intuitive with each other, which makes writing quite easy and quick. Some songs were easier than others, though; we were pleased it didn't fall apart! Certainly the end results seem to have shown sides to Brakes that weren't as obvious on Give Blood, the end result being at times a mellower album, and a more personal, sentimental affair - I'm thinking of songs like Isabel, If I Should Die Tonight and the very touching No Return. Was this an obvious decision? And did being in Nashville play a part? It's really just that those were the songs we'd written. Our motto is that anything goes in Brakes and if it sounds good, we'll record it. We'll try and tackle anything, and we like to challenge ourselves. The lyrics too seem to bounce between the good times and fond memories of personal experience in those songs, and volatile anger at political policies in the likes of Porcupine or Pineapple and Margarita. Was it important lyrically to find an outlet for these issues? Yeah, definitely. I get wound up as much as anyone reading about what's going on in the world today, and it's quite cathartic to write songs like that. I get really annoyed, but I also have good thoughts, and I try to reflect a few facets of being alive. Following the mixing of the album at Radiohead's studios, it was sent back to Nashville to be mastered by the man responsible for Neil Young's output. What did you make of his contribution? It was brilliant. He really made the mix come alive, made it shine... we got him cheap, too - he was doing it as a favour for a friend. And what were your personal favourite moments recording the album? Trying to work out No Return, which was a different song to begin with. The drums didn't work - they took away from the sadness. So we swapped them for a Hammond and it worked really well. Oxford was good too. Next to that studio there was a graveyard where Eric Blair (George Orwell) is buried, so we paid our respects... |
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Chimpomatic: The recording story of The Beatific Visions reads like a History Of Rock documentary - from recording in studios graced by Elvis with Stuart Sykes of Cat Power and White Stripes fame to having it mixed in Radiohead's studio then mastered by Neil Young's engineer, not to mention the Nashville session musicians. What do you feel about the footsteps you are treading in? Eamon Hamilton: Well, we must've been doing something right, we had all these legendary musicians actively wanting to help us out. We got David Briggs, who owned the studio and has played with everyone from Sammy Davis Jr to Elvis, to put down some barrel house piano on our song If I Should Die; It's a good song, he said. Later on, our engineer Adam told us that it was the first time he'd played on a record for three years. It's pretty flattering having people like that tell you you're writing good songs, more flattering than any review could be. Chimpomatic: What prompted you to move out to Nashville to record the album? Eamon Hamilton: We'd struck up a friendship with Stuart Sykes at South By Southwest, recording a demo of Cease and Desist with him whilst we were there, and wanted to work with him. With the strength of the pound against the dollar, it worked out cheaper, even with flights, to do the album in the USA, and we settled on Nashville. Seth Riddle, Cerys Mathew's husband and a good friend of Stuart's, helped us find a place to live and offered us some good Southern hospitality. Chimpomatic: Does the recording process have a similar urgency and immediacy as the live show or is it much more considered - and was it different for each album? Eamon Hamilton: We record live straight on to tape, which gives it that human energy. The difference in recording was that we had only five days to record the first one, but we had two weeks to record the second, so we could try a whole lot more takes until we hit the one we were happy with. Chimpomatic: How are song-writing duties split on the Brakes albums? Eamon Hamilton: We've always been instinctive with each other, and some times, songs come out when we're playing together. Other times, I'll take a song to Tom, Alex and Marc and watch as they tear it apart and rearrange it. We split the royalties 25%. Chimpomatic: Both albums seem to span many genres of music. What are some of your main influences? Eamon Hamilton: Big Bill Broonzy, Hank Williams, Sarah Records, Teenage Fanclub, Sunn O))), Yo La Tengo, Trojan Records, Kent Records, Jeffrey Lewis, Vee Jay Records, Dr Dog, John Cale, Sex Pistols, The Lilac Time, Art Brut, Broken Social Scene. Is this sounding a bit like myspace? Chimpomatic: There are less 30 second songs on The Beatific Visions, but it still clocks in at 28 minutes. Are you drifting towards a more standard song format or is the short, sharp punk format something you want to explore some more? Eamon Hamilton: It's hard to know where you're drifting to when you're on a raft. We'll just let the sea take us to whever it will and keep finding new ways to cook fish. |
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Your second album is out soon, how did that come together and how did you record it? We actually went over to Nashville and recorded in a place where Elvis had recorded, Yo La Tengo and JJ Cale had recorded, so it was quite a good place. How do you write and make your songs? The first album, Give Blood, we did it in 5 days, we kind of just went into a room and recorded it onto tape, and it was kind of magic you know so we thought we'd do the same in Nashville but we had the luxury of having two weeks to do it in. So yeah we just do what we always do, just go into a room and kept hammering it out until it felt right. You've got to get that buzz. What are we expecting from the new album? There is still the riotous fury of the first album but there are also romantic elements. |
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Now you have more time, you're bigger, more experienced and have a bit more money - does that mean the second album is going to be completely different? No, we recorded it in exactly the same way. We added some keyboards, hammond, piano, there might be some strings and a few horns. It's kinda a bit more romantic, the songs are a bit more poppy, more friendly. More listenable I guess. They returned to the States in June to record their second album. Brakes’ Nashville experience was, says Marc, “really cool, slightly strange. The city’s got such a reputation and the studio we were recording in was right in the middle of what they call Music Row, the home of country pop. It was interesting for a slightly indie-punk English band recording in the middle of it” “The album sounds great. We wanted this to be more of a stand-alone album, the last one was a bit sporadic, some of the songs were really short. We wanted to do something a bit more standardised. I’m not sure how we managed it, but this album has somehow ended up even shorter than the first one!” “It’s going to be easier for people to get, it’s more pop. Some of the songs are a bit more relaxed and, lyrically, for Eamon, there is a lot of stuff about the war and terrorism, and problems in the world, and the way that religion has connected with a lot of those problems. I guess being in America influenced that in a way” |