The Severed Cortex

Link: http://www.brakesbrakesbrakes.com/

According to the band brakesbrakesbrakes, not only are they responsible for the election of Barack Obama, they are also to be praised for saving us all from a Sarah Palin caused nuclear winter.  Because of their heroics they were then able to release their new album titled Touchdown. That's an absurd name for a record by a band hailing from the UK; you know, what with Touchdown being a totally American word and all.  Then again, anyone who claims to have engineered the U.S. election for President simply by calling Dick Cheney a dick in one of their songs, clearly has an obvious grasp for the absurd. Or perhaps a grasp of the smart aleck.  Or more likely a grasp of the I don't give a fuck.

That's probably due to the fact that brakesbrakesbrakes have a firm grasp on understanding that pop bands are a very short-lived flavor of the who knows how long thing.  Today's touchdown quickly gets turned into a 100-yard return against you on the ensuing kickoff.  So, in that respect take your shot while you have it and hope for the best.  There's a certain amount of respect I can give to a band that recognizes they have fifteen seconds to do their thing.  Get on the bull and ride it for as long as you can and hopefully there's a prize at the end.   It appears that on Touchdown, brakesbrakesbrakes accepts their fate and decides to play what they want.

What they want is to try to play both sides of the powerpunk and powerpop genres.  They also want to throw in as many hooks as they possibly can.  This works well for the powerpop songs contained within.  In fact, it works really well for the powerpop songs.  Good thing, since they make up the majority of the CD.  Ancient Mysteries, Do You Feel The Same, and Oh!Forever are very righteous tunes.  I even have a special fondness for Crush On You.  Hey, John Lee Hooker made a career out of one chord songs. brakesbrakesbrakes should be allowed to make one song out of only two chords.  For the more powerpunk songs this formula only kind of works.  Hey Hey Hey is probably the most solid out of them, but Don't Take Me To Space (Man) is a decent one also.  And hey, if those two genres don't work why not try a couple of country-like tunes.  Uhhh.  Wrong.  Leaving England is just sappy and awful and sounds more like a really lame Eagles tune. Yes, I know all Eagles tunes are lame so just picture that level of lameness and add some more lameness to it. I think that gets you to somewhere around the Dan Fogelberg realm. I probably should have just said Dan Fogelberg. Eternal Return at least makes an attempt at sounding country and fails, albeit with far less wussiness. Yes Touchdown has a couple of clunkers.   And yes, despite their outward absurdist appearance that they are just smart alecks along for the ride, there are numerous attempts at commercial success thrown in for good measure.   Too numerous.  Those two things separate a decent album from a great album and for Touchdown that separation falls on just the decent side.  Pick out the ones you like, buy them, and move on.