25 April 2006 (gig)
09 May 2006
After almost non stop listening to the Breaks Debut album 'Give Blood' over the last few months, I was chomping at the bit to see this band live. I wondered if they could pull off that mixture of moodiness and edginess and Pixies style cockiness in a live show as good as it comes across on record....They could.
They came on and kicked in with the album opener Ring a Ding Ding, then followed it in massively quick succession with most of the more upfront punky numbers from the album, 'Whats in it for me' with it's Frank Black style screeches (which Hamilton pulls off with a natural ease) totally rocked the place, 'I can't stand to stand to stand beside you' builds itself and the crowd into a frenzy, and 'Hi how are you' screeches along magnificently for all of 30 or so seconds in it's one solitary chord, surely a dream beginning for any kid trying to learn guitar, one bastard chord in the whole song and still superb!
My only small gripe about tonights gig would be that the band desperse of most of their punky songs in the first 1/3 of the gig, only a small gripe though as they played every single song from the album, plus all of their B-sides.Even a smattering of guest appearances, a girl from the Pipettes for their cover of The Jesus and Mary chain's 'Sometimes Always' and some random bloke from Stroud on another song.
The re-released single All night disco Party went down a storm,then for their cover of Johnny Cash's 'Jackson' the band invited anyone who knew the words onstage to join in......a few people joined in, whether they could make a living on karaoke is another matter, all good fun though.
The beauty of the Brakes is that they can go from singing a moving song like 'You're so pretty' one minute straight into a seven second hammering of 'Cheney'( "Cheney,cheney, stop being such a dick...") or a 30 second blast of 'pick up the phone'. Their most amusing song for me is 'Heard about your band' Basically Hamilton ranting about some dickhead he's met at a gig who won't shut the hell up.......... 'Whatever dude' superbly shouted at the end of his rant. Quality stuff.
The band played every song they have tonight, they even finished with one they'd already played, but you don't get many songs that take less time to play than their introduction...all 5 seconds of 'Comma,Comma,Comma ,full stop.' blasts out and off they go.
If you don't have the album, buy it, If you haven't seen them live, GO!
