brakesbrakesbrakes

On the 4th of July 2005, brakesbrakesbrakes gave blood to an anaemic music scene, littered with the corpses of impotent, underfed, lank- haired, unapologetically derivative, skinny-jeaned, indie-rock no- marks vomiting punk cliches over the first three rows of static, disinterested punters.

They delivered 28.8 minutes of literate, humorous, incendiary country- punk and summarily trounced the competition. 9 second polemics on the Vice President of the United States of America ['Cheney'] sat alongside genuinely beautiful love songs '[You're So Pretty'] while 6 second odes to punctuation ['Comma Comma Comma Full Stop'] gave way to moving denouncements of friends who'd lost all sight of morality ['I Can't Stand To Stand Beside You']. But brakesbrakesbrakes are an open, inclusive bunch and so there was room for songs first performed by Johnny Cash and June Carter ['Jackson'] and The Jesus & Mary Chain ['Sometimes Always'] while 'All Nite Disco Party' and 'The Most Fun' documented fondly remembered outdoor raves when MDMA actually had some effect. All this was juxtaposed with furious raging at British and American foreign policy ['Pick Up The Phone'] and more furious - and hilarious - raging at coked-up, name-dropping hipsters ['Heard About Your Band' and 'Hi How Are You'].

The recording of 'The Beatific Visions' differed from that of 'Give Blood' in many ways. The first album was almost spat out, with 13 of the 16 backing tracks recorded in one day and the only thing overdubbed a solitary lap-steel part. There was an intensity, an urgency about the proceedings. Plus they knew the songs inside out because they'd spent the best part of 18 months playing them live, so there was no cause to chin-stroke. By contrast in Nashville, some of the songs were written from scratch, or from half-formed ideas one of the four brought to the table, pieced together, shaped, arranged, added to, subtracted from, generating an excitement and nervousness informed by the unknown and the potential of what might be.

While the subject matter is drawn from a similar well as 'Give Blood', it's altogether more specific in its condemnation of certain global events and situations.

And so, brakesbrakesbrakes returned to Brighton, except Marc, who headed north to Glasgow. They returned to a music scene littered with the corpses of the aforementioned lank-haired indie-rockers. They returned with 'The Beatific Visions'. 28.9 minutes of literate country-punk. Angrier, lovelier, funnier, more insightful, cementing Brakes reputation as one of the most vital bands around at a time when erudite social commentary is needed as much as a row of tequila shots among good friends.

It ranges from intensely personal songs of love lost and painfully remembered ['No Return'] to diatribes against religious fervor and the loss of the presumption of innocence ['Hold Me In The River'] to Bulgakov influenced observations of current geo-politics ['Margherita']. Sometimes such sentiments are wrapped around riotous, deliriously entertaining, grinning ejections of clanging guitars and pounding drums [the soon-to-be-live-classic 'Porcupine or Pineapple' or the souped-up, organ-laced, marvelously unhinged 'Spring Chicken'] but there's always room for sentimentally and genuine love in the world of Brakes, with Beatific Visions', 'If I Should Die Tonight' and 'Isabel' displaying their tender side.

The great bands of our time, those deserving of our unqualified love and respect and sometimes our hyperbole, are those bands who take their influences, ingest them, produce something genuinely unique and crucially, sound like no one but themselves.