popwreckoning

In the second half of my interview with Brakesbrakesbrakes‘s singer/guitarist Eamon Hamilton and bassist Marc Beatty , they talk to me about their new live album and tell me about their “hometown” of Brighton, England.

To catch up on part 1 of this interview, click here.

Mary Chang, PopWreckoning: “Don’t Take Me to Space (Man)” is a great song, loved it the first time I heard it on Steve Lamacq‘s 6music programme. As a writer and poet, I can appreciate the rhyming use of “I don’t care if this world’s masonic” and “I’ve got a true love keeping me on it.” What was the inspiration behind it?
Eamon Hamilton (singer/guitarist for Brakesbrakesbrakes): I had seen some 2012 internet conspiracy theories, (in cheesy voice) “the world’s gonna end in 2012!” Anyway, it seems like these adult ghost stories, these conspiracy theories about the end of time. And I just didn’t care about this. I wrote it like, I don’t care whether the world ends or not.
MC: Do you feel that it’s a defining song on the album? The cover of Touchdown has the five UFOs.
Marc Beatty (bassist for Brakesbrakesbrakes): And it’s [the cover design] seems to have gone down really well. We were quite surprised how popular it’s been [with the fans].
EH: But it’s just a love song, innit? (grins)
MC: I was wondering if you’d had any alien encounters or something.(all laugh)
MB: Yes, we’ve all had them.
EH: Unfortunately, we can’t tell you.
MC: One of those “if we told you, you’d have to kill me” things?
MB: Right.
EH: One time I saw these weird lights coming up over Brighton. I couldn’t work out what these lights were. They were really close together, and then they shuttled away. Then it turned out it was just lasers. Disappointing.

MC: You will release a live album next month called Rock is Dodeljik. I have it on good authority from my best Dutch mate that I pronounced that right. She told me she read an article in a Dutch music magazine that the title had something to do with someone quitting smoking. Is this true?
EH: Yeah, I’ve quit smoking. The Netherlands, Holland, they have the best tobacco in the world, the Drum. It always was the tobacco center of Europe, what with Rotterdam and all the ports. So yeah, you can find it in all the cafes. So I thought, yeah, it was time to give it up really, and the album’s name is a reminder of this.
MB: And it’s a pun of “death” on the cigarette pack. Whenever we tour over there, we see it, and then you’ve got a picture in your mind.
EH: The health warning is “roken in dodeljik”.
MB: “Roken” means smoking, and we always thought it was funny, so we wanted to call our album “rock is deadly.”
EH: But there’s also the English phrase of a “doddle” – is that an American phrase as well? Or just British?
MC: No…not that I’m aware of.
EH: A doddle is something easy, “it’s a doddle, mate!” So yeah. And what else would you said…(begins jokey imitation of Mark Knopfler in Dire Straits) “that ain’t working, that’s the way you do it.” We’re all Dire Straits fans on the sly. (laughs) Or it could be, “rocking is dude-de-lik” like over here [in America] “hey dude!” But yeah, it [dodeljik] means lethal.

MC: So you blokes are from Brighton. Are you all originally from there, or do you have individual stories on what drew you to the seaside?
MB: Only [the brothers White] Alex [drums] and Tom [guitarist] were born in Brighton. I was born near London, moved to Brighton when I was about 3.
EH: Eh, you’re a Brighton boy!
MB: Yeah, Brighton boy. And Eamon is from Canada.
EH: From Northern B.C. [British Columbia] but moved away when I was about 2. I grew up in the West Country of Britain. I went back to Brighton for a band I was in before this because Brighton was a good epicenter of music. It’s an awesome place for music. There’s not much else there but music. But yeah, it was music that drew me to Brighton.

MC: I have been lucky to visit many places in England, mostly for gigs! But I’ve yet to stop in Brighton.
EH: Oh yeah?
MC: Yeah, but the pier and some of the venues are legendary. I’ve several friends who go down to Brighton from London regularly for gigs. Do you have any favorite venues, either playing yourselves or where you’ve seen memorable shows?
EH: My favorite one is the Pavilion Theatre. It’s a council venue. It’s so very expensive to put gigs on there. So not too many gigs get put on there.
MB: There used to be a lot of good gigs there, the promoter would promote [the bands], they would bring in their own sound systems. These days when people put on gigs there, they use the in-house sound system, which isn’t as good. And people don’t want to put on stuff there [for that reason]. Brighton’s had a bit of bad luck with venues, a lot of people buying the venues, doing them up, and getting it wrong. There’s one place, Freebar, the place where we grew up…I met Alex and Tom there when I was 15. I worked there, loads of my friends worked there, yeah, and the place has changed a lot over the years. And now it’s in a state that no one in the town likes. It was ripped out and redone.
EH: Out of towners…(scoffs)
MB: And the people who bought it recently, they changed it and had such bad business, now someone else has moved in…
EH: Really? Shit.
MB: And Brighton’s always had this changing venue scene.
EH: And we’ve always had the Concorde 2. Half of Rock is Dodeljik was recorded there.
MC: Okay. Is that shaped like an airplane or something?
MB: It’s called the Concorde 2 because there used to be a Concorde venue further towards the centre of town, near the seafront. They closed that down because the council wanted to turn it into this whole new development with a Burger King, an arcade, all that sort of shit. So they [the people who run the Concorde 2] bought a listed building slightly further down the road, a big old building.
EH: Yeah, and it’s a great venue. Brighton’s just a great town for music.

MC: How often do you go back [to Brighton] now that you’re on tour?
MB: Eamon lives in New York…Alex is in London. I lived in Glasgow for the last 2 and a half years, I’m just about to move back to Brighton. So yeah, we’ve got family and friends there.
EH: (begins Rod Stewart impression) “it’s in our heart, it’s in our soul…” Sorry! (laughs)

MC: I know you guys are needed at the sound check…so what it is like touring with your labelmates [We Were Promised Jetpacks and the Twilight Sad]? Were you mates before? Did you know what their music was like?
EH: We did know their music, yeah.
MB: We’ve only been on this label for a year or so. And yeah, a year today, or a year a couple days ago. But this is the first Fat Cat-orientated tour that we’ve done. We did a show in Brighton at the Great Escape [a English music festival that takes place in May]. It’s sort of like a South by Southwest in Brighton. We did a gig, we headlined and they supported us. We kinda met them then, but it was a really busy time, we couldn’t make any relationships with them. And they live in Scotland. Surprisingly, I hadn’t even met them when I lived there, probably because I was away on tour and they were always on tour. So yeah, since last week, we’ve been starting to get to know everyone on the bus.
MC: Have you been enjoying the tour so far?
EH: Yeah, it’s been awesome.
MC: When did you guys start in America?
EH: A couple days ago, on Thursday in Chapel Hill.
MB: Just about recovering from jet lag now. Today. Today I feel normal. The thing is, we flew over and then went straight into it [gigging]…ughh! And you don’t get much sleep, it takes about a week to get used to sleeping on a bus.

Alex and Tom come out and say it’s time for their sound check.

MC: Thanks guys for this interview.
MB: Yeah, thank you.

Interview conducted and gig photos in this article by: Mary Chang

Brakesbrakesbrakes: website | myspace | BrakesBrakesBrakes Announces October North American Tour, Plans for Single and Live Album | Fat Cat Records Tour Featuring the Twilight Sad, Brakesbrakesbrakes, and We Were Promised Jetpacks @ Black Cat, Washington, DC | Interview with: Marc Beatty and Eamon Hamilton of Brakesbrakesbrakes (Part 1)

The Brighton, England band, known as Brakes to me and most everywhere except America, is known under the moniker Brakesbrakesbrakes stateside. Despite the “difficult to say five times fast” name they have when they come visit us, I found singer/guitarist Eamon Hamilton and bassist Marc Beatty to be extremely nice guys, as you shall read in the following exchange between us. In the first half of my interview with them prior to them sound-checking at D.C.’s Black Cat on October 5, they tell me about recording their latest album Touchdown in Scotland, and we have a brief segue into fairy tale land. Have a read!

Mary Chang, PopWreckoning: I am here in Washington with Marc and Eamon, two members of Brakes, or Brakesbrakesbrakes as they are known in America, a name I don’t really like…
Marc Beatty (bassist for Brakesbrakesbrakes): Neither do we.
Eamon Hamilton (singer/guitarist for Brakesbrakesbrakes): Yeah, You’ll have to speak with the Philadelphian funk rock band’s [Brakes] lawyer about that. (all laugh) There you go. But we didn’t want to be “Brakes UK,” because that would have been “brakes uck”.
MC: You mean like the Charlatans.
EH: Yeah, we could have done that, I suppose.
MB: I think anyone who likes us over here [in America] knows us as Brakes anyway.
MC: Yes, right.
EH: In Britain, when you’re doing your driving test, there’s an emergency stop you have to do, when you have to put on the brake at the end. And the [instructor] guy goes, “brakes brakes brakes!” So you see, that has some…well, that’s the only story we can salvage from the depths of our hatred… (laughs)
MB: I dunno. My driving instructor never said that.
EH: Did he not?
MB: No, mine slapped the windscreen instead.
EH: Oh haha, not “brakes brakes brakes”?
MB: No, he said “brakes, now!”
EH: “Brakes, now” eh? (all laugh)

MC: Welcome to Washington. We’re very happy to have you guys here. Have you played in Washington before?
MB: No, first time.
EH: I have with British Sea Power [his previous band].
MC: Do you remember which venue?
EH: Here, actually. We played with the Libertines, it was just after Pete [Doherty] had left. And err, who was the other band? I can’t remember.
MC: So this must have been seven odd years ago then.
EH: Oh wait, I think it was the Living Things.
MC: Oh yeah? I saw them here in June.
EH: I didn’t like them much.

MC: Your latest studio album, Touchdown, was released in April. I read that you recorded it in Scotland. Quite a hike from Nashville, where your last album [The Beautific Visions] was recorded. How did you like recording there, versus Nashville?
EH: Well, we’ve always recorded in musically rich places. Well, London…(scoffs)…well yeah, London’s musically rich? (looks over at Marc)
MB: London, Brighton.
EH: London, Brighton, you know, places with great musical heritage. And then we recorded in Glasgow, home of Teenage Fanclub, one of our favorite bands. And the Delgados. You know, everything. So it was just brilliant!
MB: I lived there at the time, so it was convenient.
MC: Is that how you guys decided to record in Scotland?
MB: Yeah, sort of. And also because Fat Cat [Records, their label] has ties with Paul Savage who produced the album. He has a studio up there [Chem19] so we liked the idea of recording there, it seemed like a good thing to do.
EH: And we also used Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub, he made a compressor that we used for the album. Then he said what we were doing with it sounded good…
MC: Oh yeah?
EH: …and then he took it away again. (looks semi-crestfallen)
MB: Took it away!
MC: That has historical value now!

MC: So what was it like working with Paul Savage [of the Scottish band the Delgados and also a famed music producer]?
EH: He’s a legend. He let us do everything.
MB: He was really easy to work with. We had about three weeks, and it was a little bit rushed, but we got on really well. Really outgoing.
EH: He cooked us some amazing meals.
MB: Yeah, that was probably the best part of it!

MC: So how would you say that the making of this album different than for The Beautific Visions?
MB: We took our time.
EH: It was rushed, but less rushed! (laughs)
MB: The first album was done in 1 week, the second album took us 2 weeks, and this third one took us three weeks…sort of natural progression really.
MC: I take it you guys work well under pressure?
MB: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

MC: It’s been three years since the second album.
MB: Has it been that long? (sounds surprised)
MC: Did you feel different pressures / inspirations in the process of making Touchdown?
MB: There were a lot of factors. We changed labels [from Rough Trade Records to Fat Cat] and because it had been quite a bit of time since the last one. We had a bit more time to write the second one, which was really pressured. We sort of…we pulled it off but it was tough. We had a bit more freedom with this one, so we could think about it a bit more.
EH: It was really great to be offered another album, really.
MB: Yeah yeah. We had a bit of a dark year. It had been over a year before that when we’d done some demo-ing.
EH: In the dark tower!
MB: Yeah, we wrote songs in a cold barn in Oxfordshire. In a tiny room…write that down that I’m pointing to this…(laughs while gesturing to small U-Haul truck in the Black Cat parking lot)
EH: Yeah, like 10 foot by 12 foot space.
MB: One strip light. Really tiny place.
EH: And it was freezing cold.
MB: And we got really pissed off at each other. And then after that we took some time off. I forget how long…
EH: We were still gigging in between. Yeah, how long was it…
MB: Hmmm…
MC: Easy to lose track of time when you’re gigging all over the place?
EH: Yeah. It wasn’t long enough though. When we got back together, we still fucking hated each other. There should have been a punchline here, shouldn’t there? (all laugh) I shouldn’t have said that, should I?
MB: The important thing is we get on now! We’ve come through the dark times.
EH: Yeah, we came away from the dark tower. Luckily, Rumpelstiltskin let down his golden hair, and we climbed down and now we’re in the fields.
MB: Wait a minute, I think you’re mixing up your fairy tales.
MC: Rapunzel?
EH: Rapunzel! That’s it! (all laugh)

We then narrowly miss getting hit by a car leaving the parking lot that almost did not slow down when it came right up by us. But there’s more to this interview, much more. Stay tuned for part 2 of this interview with Marc and Eamon coming soon!

Photo: Mary Chang

Brakesbrakesbrakes: website | myspace | BrakesBrakesBrakes Announces October North American Tour, Plans for Single and Live Album | Fat Cat Records Tour Featuring the Twilight Sad, Brakesbrakesbrakes, and We Were Promised Jetpacks @ Black Cat, Washington DC

The Fat Cat Records label is a Brighton, England institution; they have signed highly divergent, up and coming acts from across the globe, from Sigur Rós to Vetiver, from Frightened Rabbit to Vashti Bunyan. So I took much delight in hearing that the label was sending several of their signings over to North America for a tour. For the Washington date, the three acts being featured at the Black Cat were the Scottish bands We Were Promised Jetpacks and the Twilight Sad, and the English band Brakesbrakesbrakes.

Glaswegians We Were Promised Jetpacks were first up. The band recently put out their debut album, These Four Walls, and they’ve been garnering a lot of attention stateside. I loved their song “Roll Up Your Sleeves” the first time I caught their video online. Singer/guitarist Adam Thompson looks like a Boy Scout, but boy, he sure doesn’t sing like one. They’re rock, they’re punk, they’re everything in between. They’re also very young guys, which probably explains band members joking with each other between songs and Thompson’s telling us about the stench in their tour bus when its generator broke down, leaving them without electricity or running water. In response to this, someone in the audience quipped, “Just like Scotland!” to which Thompson replied with a sideways laugh to bassist Sean Smith, “They think we run around in kilts back home, don’t they?” There was a collective laugh throughout the club and then the band launched into “Quiet Little Voices” with Thompson’s searing vocals: “In any which direction, call me / I will run for you! / I’ll come for you! / I’ll die for you! / I’ll come for you!”

With Thompson and Smith, Michael Palmer (guitar) and Darren Lackie (drums) are an explosive unit live. Sometimes you aren’t sure how the first act of the night is going to be received; I’ve been to some gigs where you could hear people’s conversations clearly in between the songs because there are so few people present and most of them are not really paying attention, just taking up space and waiting for the headliner who comes on later. This was not the case with the Jetpacks’s set at all. Despite the band order, it appeared that many of people present were there specifically for their set and alighted as soon as they were done. A lot of people sang along, and Thompson was so happy with the reception and so many people showing up for their set, he lit up the room with his smile and said by far this was his favorite night in America so far on this tour. Mission accomplished, Washington.

After brief shifting of equipment and gear, the stage was set for the arrival of Brakesbrakesbrakes. In my head I’ll always think of them as Brakes because that’s what they’re known as everywhere in the world except America (courtesy of a Philadelphia band who had already called dibs on the Brakes moniker here in the States), so they will be referred to as Brakes for the rest of this review. Of the three bands, I’m most familiar with Brakes’s back catalogue, and they’ve never played Washington before, so I was excited to say the least. Their third and latest album, Touchdown, was released back in April.

They’re an extremely versatile band, with songs running the gamut from folky, country rock (“On Your Side”) to punk (“Porcupine or Pineapple”) to more straight forward rock ‘n’ roll (“Don’t Take Me to Space [Man]“). Singer/guitarist Eamon Hamilton led Brakes (with Thomas White on guitar, Marc Beatty on bass, and Alex White on drums) on a rousing set of 16 songs across their three albums. “Hey Hey,” a raucous, guitar-heavy tune from Touchdown, was a joy to hear live finally, along with “Don’t Take Me to Space (Man),” my favorite off the new album. One enthusiastic fan exclaimed that being that we were in D.C., the band had to play “Cheney,” a song from the band’s first album Give Blood; it’s a five-second tirade against our former not-so-beloved vice president. Hamilton rewarded the fan by asking him to “count in” the song for them. It went over so well that another fan was chosen to do the same, to even louder audience cheers.

Brakesbrakesbrakes set list:
The Most Fun
Shut Us Down (Camper Van Beethoven cover)
Hey Hey
Ring a Ding Ding
On Your Side
All Night Disco Party
Porcupine or Pineapple
Hold Me in the River
Worry About It Later
Why Tell the Truth (When It’s Easier to Lie)
What’s in It for Me?
Isabel
Don’t Take Me to Space (Man)
Cheney (2x, counted in by two different audience members)
No Return
Jackson (Jerry Leiber/Billy Edd Wheeler cover)

Two hours after we started, it was now time for the Twilight Sad. We Were Promised Jetpacks cite the Twilight Sad as one of their influences, so it’s quite appropriate to have them on the same tour. The band just released their sophomore album-length effort, Forget the Night Ahead, here in the U.S. last month. Singer James Graham decided to begin their set with a decidedly-toned down mood compared to the acts that came before: he clutched his mike as if his life depended on it, and knelt down on the floor as “Reflection of the Television” chugged to life thanks to his fellow bandmates Andy MacFarlane (guitar), Craig Orzel (bass), Mark Devine (drums), and touring keyboardist Martin Docherty. They remind me a bit of the Horrors, with their swirly guitars and keyboards set off by moody, pensive lyrics; “The Room” and “I Became a Prostitute” are good examples of this. I didn’t felt the same kind of energy from them that I did from the previous bands. Maybe it was because it was a Monday night, it was late, and it was Washington, but they just didn’t set me alight.

Stay tuned for an interview with Marc Beatty and Eamon Hamilton of Brakesbrakesbrakes coming soon!

We Were Promised Jetpacks: myspace
Brakesbrakesbrakes: website | myspace
The Twilight Sad: website | myspace