The Brakes open there debut album Give Blood with the line from Ring A Ding Ding that goes

“Ring a ding ding
My head’s in a spin
There’s a cowboy in the court with a monkey on his dick”

and right away you now you in for something a little different.

The quartet are made up of Eamon Hamilton on vocals and guitar from British Sea Power, Tom White on guitar and Alex White banging the drums from Electric Soft Parade and Marc Beatty on bass from The Tenderfoot. And when these guys get together it’s pure males-in-their-early-twenties debauchery.

The album is fuelled largely by a desire for the following things: cocaine, alcohol and an anything-goes party attitude. Subsequently the album is also holding two firm fingers up to those who spend their time excessing mindlessly on the following things: cocaine, alcohol and an anything-goes party attitude.

It’s a clash that explodes musically on tracks like Heard About Your Band (“Whatever dude!”). Hamilton has obviously had the pleasure of being (dis)engaged in a lot of banal conversations with so-called ‘movers & shakers’  in his musical life and takes it out on each one of them in this song:

“You’re talking hyper bollocks
You’re talking salaries”.

Hi How Are You  with lyrics “Won’t you just shut the fuck up, I’m tryin’ to watch the band” could be part two if the band wanted to get all ‘concept album’ on us. And maybe they are and couldn’t be arsed to mention it to anyone. I wouldn’t put it pass them.

A 10 second distorion burp screams out “Cheney, stop being such a dick!”.

The guitars throughout the album are filthy and dissonent. There’s no melodic flow and the average track time is just over one minute and 30 seconds long, but at no time is this album passe or boring. The Brakes are always up to something extreme, whether they be scaling drug addled heights or scraping dark depths on a nose-dive comedown.

NY Pie and Jackson display a bizarre alt-country-ness that’s not quite alt-country and might seem more at home on the Country Music Channel on pay TV.

I Can’t Stand to Stand Beside You is the most focussed and direct track on the album with hard-edged guitars and a vocal delivered through a mouthful of glass shards. There’s an amazing seething quality to this track that makes it stand alone on Give Blood in terms of its understated sharpness.

The foot stomping All Night Disco Party is one track that crosses so many genres anyone from a Britney-loving teenager at a school disco to an alcohol-possesed nightclubber could be jamming away to it. Hamilton whips up a fever as he croons “A super all-night-uber-rocking disco party”, the bass pulsating behind him and the guitars kicking and screaming to keep up. It’s more Har Mar Superstar than anything the so-called post-punk, art-rock genres could dream up.

It’s all over in a fraction under 30 minutes, though. But every second is worthy of another listen. It’s crazed, wild and uncompromising, and a gem as a result.