Tag Archives: brakes

#1126: Brakes – Ring a Ding Ding

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No more Brakes after this one. Some of you may read this post and think, “So?” Maybe this is the first song you would have ever heard by the band. Well, if that’s the case, this would be a good place to start. ‘Ring a Ding Ding’ is the first song on the band’s debut album Give Blood, released back in 2005. The first song I’d ever heard by this band was ‘All Night Disco Party’, which you can listen to and read about via clicking on the title name. That’s a fun one. It’s also on the same album. Choruses come at you fast throughout the record, in styles ranging from country to disco to punk, no time to dwell on verses, and it all begins with this track right here. There’s an official music video for this song, which for some reason isn’t on YouTube. You can see it on Apple Music, though.

‘Ring’ opens with a small “woo”, a confident strumming of an F-sharp chord and some guitar feedback before the band come in altogether with Eamon Hamilton’s gravelly vocal. The narrator here describes the messed-up state he’s in brought about by the nonsensical, surreal things that are happening around him. There’s a cowboy in the court who’s singing to the monkey macaroni (which I think is meant to be a dance of some kind) and he finds solace in Super Skipper Sue who he hopes will provide some comfort to him. What I take the song to be is a big metaphor of going to work, just being sick of the people and different characters you have to deal with on a daily basis, and them coming home to your girlfriend/wife/significant other who makes things better when you walk through the door. But going literal with the lyrics wouldn’t make it that interesting, would it? After a passing mention of the phrase from which the album gets its name from, the song ends abruptly, leaving you hanging for a short while before proceedings continue on the following track.

Yeah, BrakesBrakesBrakes. They were a good band. They are a good band. Still not sure whether they’ve split up or not. The band’s Touchdown is their most recent album to date, and it was released 15 years ago. Not looking like there’s any new music on the horizon, which is a shame. But like so many of those UK indie bands from the 2000s, they just seemed to fade away. Pitchfork described Give Blood as ‘a gift to short attention spans everywhere’, and that is very much a sentiment that could be carried for the other two albums that make up what I guess you would call a trilogy. Don’t think things got as unpredictable as they were on Give Blood, which is why I would say it’s my favourite of the three. You can find the band on your local streaming platform. Can’t go wrong with any album you start with.

#959: Brakes – NY Pie

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Brighton band Brakes’ (or BrakesBrakesBrakes in the US) debut album Give Blood gets off to a very fine start. The four beginning tracks I’ve come to like so much that I’ve added ’em to my personal playlist for continuous repeats. I’ve written about two of them already. ‘NY Pie’ is the second track on there. After a short shock of some good indie rock on opener ‘Ring a Ding Ding’, ‘NY’ takes a bit of a turn. Not in the unsettling kind of way, more the pleasantly surprised type. That country-tinged opening riff certainly brightens things up just a bit more.

That is until you follow the story that goes on in the lyrics. Not to say that they really bring that good feeling down, but they do tell a definitely relatable tale of those situations where things that are meant to be going so well take a 180 degree turn. Here, our narrator’s fallen in love with a lady, or is in the least infatuated with her under the bright lights of New York City. He invites her out for a night, but then proceeds to get a bit too drunk and falls down the stairs of a bar. He wakes up some time later, policemen are all in his case. He gets out of that ordeal. And if the final verse is anything to go by, it’s clear that the lady from earlier wasn’t impressed by what she saw and got out of there before things could get worse. It’s a bit comical, but would probably hit home a bit too hard for some. But with the bouncy rhythm, sprightly guitars and sweet melody, it’s very easy for the message to just fly over.

Personal note on my end, I really dig Eamon Hamilton’s vocal style. It certainly makes Brakes songs stand out from other bands that were making the same kind of music back in the 2000s. That and their knack of making some powerful melodic songs that were only ever about two minutes in length. Hamilton’s vocals stick out here too. He’s possesses a Western twang in his delivery, and not like Wild Wild West of the US, more like the Somerset/Cornwall west of the UK. Only makes sense ’cause that’s where he was raised. But with that and its gravelly tone which is prone to breaking here and there and reaching some strange pitches, it’s always the go-to audible element to go to when hearing a Brakes song.

#863: Brakes – The Most Fun

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Brighton-based band Brakes’ first album Give Blood is funny in a way. It contains songs where they suddenly end, just when you were properly getting into their rhythm, or when they’re about to hit some sort of climax. ‘The Most Fun’ is one of them. It’s only a minute and a half, made up of two chords with no choruses or bridges. More one long verse with some periods where there’s no singing for a few seconds.

Vocalist Eamon Hamilton, backed by Matt Eaton (a member of fellow Brighton band Actress Hands), harmonise about the time the gypsies came to town and gave everybody a weekend to remember. Before then, they were just country boys doing usual country boy shit, I guess. But then the gypsie came. They put up a tent, invited everyone in, and it’s fair to say judging by the track’s last few lines that they all had a great time. And after the reveal that nothing was ever the same after those nights, the song ends and the band launch right into the following track. Those first few tracks really keep the album rolling along quite swiftly.

So there’s not much else to say about this one. The first few times I heard it, I did think it sounded more like an interlude more than anything else. But then I started to appreciate the gradual swell and increasing intensity of the music underneath the lyrics, and the almost droning effect that the guitars and vocals brought when combined together. It’s also a very relatable set of lyrics. It’s a nice one. Yeah, it’s short, but it really says all it has to in its time.

My iPod #532: Brakes – Hold Me in the River

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The Brighton based band Brakes released their second album The Beatific Visions in 2006, one year and a few months after raising the roof with the impressive debut of Give Blood.  The Beatific Visions reinforced the rough rock ‘n’ roll delivered in songs under/just above two minutes that was established with Give Blood, albeit with crisper and cleaner production.

“Hold Me in the River” starts it all off and was released as the album’s first single. The track takes fourteen seconds to warm up before breaking into its riff which acts as the main instrumental refrain. Lacking a chorus, “Hold Me” consists only of two verses sung by an ever-eccentric Eamon Hamilton who sings about, what I can only guess, being ready to take on anything that comes his way.

A very confident opener, it is something to get you ‘settled’ in for the ten tracks that are to come.

My iPod #500: Brakes – Heard About Your Band

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500 posts. That’s crazy. I never thought this would be something I’d still have the energy and commitment to carry on two years later, and yet here we are. I’m proud. Thanks to anyone who has liked, given a comment, or simply checked the blog out. You are part of the reason I choose to do this. A big part nonetheless.

And so the band that has the privilege of having the half-thousand song that I am going to discuss is Brakes. Or BrakesBrakesBrakes, if you are situated in the USA. “Heard About Your Band” is a song from the Brighton band’s debut album Give Blood, released ten years ago in July. The album was recorded in a mere eight days in January 2005, and most of the tracks on there were recorded live and in one take. There are some cuts where the band will finish one track, and you’ll proceed to hear them tuning their guitars and sorting themselves out before going straight into the next one. Many of the songs are under 3 minutes. The shortest is seven seconds. And with a wealthy amount of sixteen tracks, Give Blood doesn’t even reach half an hour in duration. It’s very efficient. It is a belter.

“Heard About Your Band” is the fourth track in, and is about singer Eamon Hamilton’s experience of listening to this guy incessantly rabbiting on his band, and his stories of meeting all these female icons like Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs and ‘the girl’ from Sleater-Kinney. Of course, Hamilton is sarcastic throughout his lyricism; he clearly doesn’t give a shit about what this person has to say, but his vocal performance with his gravely yelps and frantic ad-libs make him sound like he’s so excited about the whole ordeal. In the end, he dismisses with a pissed-off sounding “Whatever, dude” and the track comes to a close a minute and ten seconds in.

A great thing about the album is that the tracks don’t go on longer than they should do. All the good parts are crammed into maybe 1-2 minutes, which makes for some enjoyable listening. “Heard About Your Band” is no different.

That’s 500 done. Here’s to the next 500. Keep on reading.