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HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE OF MUSIC? Barnyard punk disco. I don't know - does that sound shit? Punk folk indie rock? WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES? Do you want a list? - anything on Ace Records, Sun Records, Vee Jay Records, Creation Records, Rough Trade Records, Columbia Records, Paper Records, JagJaguar Records. Hank Williams, Pixies, Otis Redding, Field Music, Elvis, The Beatles, Leadbelly, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy, Joanna Newsom, Camera Obscura, Aerosmith, Cat Power, Sunn O)), Jay Z, The Rolling Stones, The Moldy Peaches, JG Ballard, TC Boyle, Hunter S Thompson, Wordsworth, Koren Zailckas, Laurie Lee, Jules Verne, long walks in the countryside, long walks through cities, the weather, The Wire (both the American TV programme and the magazine), Celebrity Big Brother, Deal or No Deal. Our biggest influence is each other. WHAT HAS THE FEEDBACK FROM FANS/THE MUSIC PRESS BEEN LIKE? It's been great - the press and radio and tv all seem to like it (the new album) and fans have really liked it, our gigs have been getting packed. YOU HAVE A NEW SINGLE, "HOLD ME IN THE RIVER". WHAT IS THE TRACK ABOUT? Hold me in the river was our last single - it's about loss of liberty, original sin, being beaten down by social pressures and Scarlett Johansson. Our new single, Cease and Desist, is about a card game between a drunken God, and a destructive Devil. HOW WERE THE RECENT SHOWS WITH THE KILLERS? Brilliant, each night was a sell out (I don't think this was due to us being on the bill, to be honest), and their audiences really took to us. It's always a bit weird opening for a big band - you have half an hour to win them around, and we managed it each night. They are really nice chaps - down to earth. WERE YOU PREVIOUSLY FANS OF THE BAND? We saw them years ago, when they were supporting British Sea Power, and they haven't changed at all. They write really anthemic power pop tunes that stick in your head, which is what you want, really. I HEAR IT WAS THE KILLERS THEMSELVES WHO PERSONALLY INVITED YOU TO PLAY THE SHOWS? Yes, they rang us up, and we said 'yes'. It didn't sink in for a few hours, until my brother goes 'FUCKING HELL, YOU'RE SUPPORTING THE FUCKING KILLERS!!!' WHAT WAS THE FIRST GIG YOU WENT TO AS A PUNTER? The first big proper gig I paid to see was when I was 14, to see the Pixies doing their Doolittle tour, at the Gloucester Leisure Centre. It was incredible - all the songs I loved played really fucking loud. IF YOU COULD PICK ONE ARTIST TO WRITE OR PERFORM WITH, WHO WOULD IT BE? Aretha Franklin - I'd learn a lot. HOW IMPORTANT ARE WEB OR FANZINES SUCH AS SCREAMING TARTS TO BANDS LIKE BRAKES? They're the life blood of new music aren't they? No advertising agendas or demographic surveys to beholden to. WHAT FIRST MADE YOU WANT TO PICK UP A GUITAR AND JOIN/FORM A BAND? A combination of Back To The Future (you know the opening scene where he picks up Doc Brown's guitar and the massive amp?) and a Little Richard tape I got for my tenth birthday from my dad. WHAT DO YOU HAVE PLANNED FOR THE REST OF 2007? Touring, recording, top ten single, platinum album. |
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Hello, I'm Rob Da Bank and this is the JD set. We're going to kickstart the series with a band that represents exactly the kind of talent that these sessions were created for. Formed in a Brighton boozer Brakes is a kind of seaside supergroup made up of members from Electric Soft Parade and British Sea Power (and Tenderfoot!) Their first album Give Blood was a blinding record full of short choppy numbers and their follow up Beatific Visions is full on smack-round-the-head stuff for the musical senses. What I really like about these guys, even more than the records, is that live they completely rock, from the slightly unhinged ooh he's a bit weird isn't he vocal performance of frontman Eamon Hamilton to their all-consuming stage presence, you just get caught up in it. I really do believe Brakes are one of the best live acts out there, so we caught up with them in Glasgow, to see them in action. Eamon: We started in a bar, called Palmers bar, where I was playing an acoustic gig. Tom and Alex and Marc said yeah when I asked them to become the backing band. Marc: We didn't really play much for about 6 months because we were all in different bands, we were all really busy. Actually it was about 2 years, wasn't it. We rehearsed and played once every 6 months for about 2 years. And then we did the album and got a bit more serious and started playing a lot more. Eamon: The first band I ever saw was The Pixies doing their Dolittle tour when I was about 13 in Gloucester, Gloucester Leisure Centre. Alex: It was Beatles for me and realising that that sound on that record, if you got another guy, I could do that bit of it, he could do that bit of it and that's how they must have done it, do you know what I mean, working that out and realising that's how they did it. Marc: Probably the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. The character Rufus, there's one bit where he does this stupid solo and I remember seeing that and going "I wanna play guitar like that". It got me playing instruments that's for sure. Tom: Queen. Eamon: Oh, they make me ill... Alex: Oh man. CEASE & DESIST. Alex: It's great fun playing live because you get that immediate feedback. You do something and right then someone reacts. Not like making a record where you read press things or people say to you "I loved that record". It's right there you know. But it's kind of a weird thing to have to do. To have to... Eamon: Perform like a monkey. Alex: Doing your thing monkey, ooh-ooh-ooh. Marc: Obviously it helps if you have a crowd that likes you. Tom: You get a (subtitles say fab) crowd every now and then and that makes it all worth it. ALL NIGHT DISCO PARTY. Eamon: The first album's called Give Blood and we only had a week to do it in really. Marc: It was down time. Alex: Yeah, we got a posh studio for cheap basically so we had to do it when we were told to do it. We had 5 days. Tom: It's that kinda old school thing of if the mikes you're using and the gear you're using is good enough, you don't need to produce it in any way other than just play well and give good performances. And also letting a song finish naturally, not dragging it out, not pushing an arrangement of a song so that it lasts 3 minutes. As soon as the point's made, that's it. Eamon: The new album's mostly about God, War and Love. Alex: Human interaction. Tom: There's a couple of girls in there. God, Satan and Porcupines. Alex: The issues of the day. Eamon: We went to Nashville, it's a beautiful place. We recorded in this place called House Of David which is an old Tennessee house on Music Row. It's run by a guy called David Briggs who used to play piano with the Muscle Shoals band and went on to (support?) The Beatles and played with Elvis for about 10 years up until his death. And we got him to play piano on one of our tunes. Alex: I think this record's more of a record, you know. It's more of a kind of piece in one go, it all kind of not sounds the same, but kind of works together, hangs together. PORCUPINE OR PINEAPPLE. Alex: We don't take ourselves that seriously, much as Tom might. Marc: We just try and have fun. Eamon: We're not career driven, which I think a lot of bands form for. Tom: A lot of the time nowadays, it's more about what audiences expect from a gig, rather than what's actually delivered. So much is kinda built on hope, so I think if we can keep the excitement going live I don't think any particular album's ever going to be that important. I don't think you can pin all your hopes on one record. Eamon: But you can on Brakes. Tom: But you can with us. COMMA COMMA FULL STOP. |
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The debut album from this energetic Brighton four-piece is a foot-stomping burst of punked country rock. There'll be no stopping the Brakes in 2007, writes Kevin Courtney. HERE'S a tip for 2007: if your band isn't going anywhere, just hook up with some guys from other bands and knock off a 30-minute album in double-quick time. Before you know it, your jam band has become bigger than your real band, and your little side-project has become an all-conquering, four-headed behemoth. It worked for the two guys from The Greenhornes: when they got together with Brendan Benson and the guy out of The White Stripes, they surpassed even their greatest expectations. Brakes could be called the British Raconteurs, except that singer Eamon Hamilton is mostly Canadian. "I had a Canadian accent until I was 11, and then I went to secondary school and just got it kicked out of me by the other pupils and teachers," he recalls. "So it's kind of a blend of West Country, and with Brighton now as well." Eamon's bandmates in Brakes are Tom and Alex White from Brighton band The Electric Soft Parade, and Marc Beatty, who plays in Tenderfoot and runs his own studio in Brighton. Eamon used to play keyboards in British Sea Power, but was eking out a living as a singer-songwriter, performing rasping country-punk tunes to whoever was still drinking in the bar. One night in 2002, Tom and Alex were drinking in Palmer's Bar in Brighton, watching Eamon support The Lonesome Organist, and immediately offered to become his guitarist and drummer. They recruited Marc as bassist and recorded their debut album, Give Blood, at Marc's studio. It was done in little more than a day. "It happened very naturally, really," says Alex. "Electric Soft Parade were on a big label and we had lots of money chucked at us and stuff, but then we were dropped from that label, and there wasn't a lot of work. We sat around for a while, and then we just made the first Brakes record, and it all snowballed." Giving the snowball a bit of a shove was a track called All Night Disco Party, written as a parody of Tom's taste in early 1990s rave music, but which found its way onto many indie discos of the mid-naughties. And, among the overlong indie epics that seem to take up far too much time on the CD player, Give Blood was a refreshingly short, sharp slap in the face. Most of the tracks clocked in at less than two minutes, but even they seemed like prog-rock meanderings beside Comma Comma Comma Full Stop, a six-second burst of punctuated power. "It's not really deliberate," insists Eamon. "That's just the way a lot of the songs come out. Sometimes the songs just write themselves, and it's like, OK, this is a good song, even though it's only six seconds long. We all work together so well, there's a kind of ESP in Brakes. If you stick the four of us into a room for four minutes, we'll come up with a song. We work together really quickly and simply." The songs on new album The Beatific Visions may fly by quickly enough, but there's nothing simplistic about the sentiments expressed in Hold Me in the River, Mobile Communication, Spring Chicken and Cease and Desist. Quickfire political rants such as Porcupine or Pineapple? have more punch than the biggest chest-beating, anti-war anthems, while Isabel and If I Should Die Tonight are gentle, country-sad ballads that help widen the album's vision way beyond its 28-minute allotted time. It's a half-hour burst of guitar-shredding, punked-up, countrified rock'n'roll, without an ounce of fat or excess baggage to drag it down. This is an album on which every riff matters, every line stings and every chorus counts for something. To make The Beatific Visions, the band swapped Brighton for Nashville, recording the album at House of David studios with help from legendary piano player David Briggs, who has tinkled the ivories with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr, JJ Cale and Elvis. Eamon, for one, was starstruck. "He supported The Beatles on their Shea Stadium tour, and he was just cracking me up. He came over to England to record with George Harrison, and he was finding these rooms in George Harrison's mansion. He went into one room and found a whole carousel, with horses and everything." |