One of my favorite albums of ‘05 came from the UK group Brakes. Their totally overlooked debut LP, Give Blood, was a crazed combination of everything from ten-second punk tracks to wandering country ballads. Brakes’ spastic stylistic changes could have been a recipe for disaster, but fortunately gave us a very intriguing listen. Led by former British Sea Power keyboardist Eamon Hamilton and backed by Tom & Alex White from Electric Soft Parade and Marc Beatty from Tenderfoot, this is a mighty great indie supergroup.
Brakes are back with a brand new album, The Beatific Visions, which will hit stores in the UK on November 6. The record was recorded with Stuart Sikes, who had produced Cat Power and engineered White Stripes’ White Blood Cells. According to their official website, they hooked up in Nashville, recording in the House Of David studio while crashing out in a frat house.
Beatty described the album as “a great battle between evil good and evil where the world almost cracks in half, sucking everyone into a life of eternal darkness and misery.” Wow, that sounds cheery! He continued: “There’s so much fucked-up shit going on in this world that it’s hard not to pass comment on it in our music. But as much as it’s important to us to write about that kind of stuff, there’s a lot of love and romance in there too.”
You can hear the new song “Porcupine Or Pineapple” on their MySpace site. Peep the tracklisting below:
The Beatific Visions
01. “Hold Me In The River”
02. “Margarita”
03. “If I Should Die Tonight”
04. “Mobile Communication”
05. “Spring Chicken”
06. “Isabel”
07. “Beatific Vision”
08. “Porcupine or Pineapple”
09. “Cease and Desist”
10. “On Your Side”
11. “No Return”
