I've obtained a promo of the new Broken Family Band album and have been playing it into submission for the last week, desperately trying to love it. I've enjoyed pretty much everything the BFB have recorded thus far, especially the first few albums which contained a mix of the graceful and the powerful; stargazing ballads and enjoyable, humorous rockers. They were a bit of alt.country and a bit of rock'n'roll and it worked perfectly.
Here, they pretty much abandon the slower songs in favour of an album's worth of rocky numbers. It is really hard going. Musically there is almost no break from the loud drums/guitar sound that the album opens with, little in the way of piano or accordion etc to lighten the mood. This of course would not matter too much if the songs were good.
Occasionally, they are. 'Cinema vs House' is an enjoyable enough song about early-relationship dating issues, 'Old Wounds' is the one poignant country-ish ballad about burying the hatchet and 'The Girls In This Town' has some nice bluesy guitar.
How though did BFB manage to write a song as horrible as 'St Albans'...sample lyric "You're only in St Albans cos you thought you were having sex...no-one in St Albans wants to fuck you"? Just tired, dirgy and unpleasant. 'Please Yourself' is similarly bitter and humourless and neither song either has the saving grace of having a good tune.
Listening to this album again and again, I just found it depressing and sad. I can understand a band wanting to change direction but previous albums have sounded so full of life, whereas this one sounds tired, devoid of ideas and desperate to shock.
Boring.
4.8
['Please and Thank You' is out in April on Cooking Vinyl]
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