Give Blood falls squarely in the "pleasant surprise" camp; a gift to short attention spans everywhere. Also including members of Electric Soft Parade and the Tenderfoot, Brakes is fronted by British Sea Power's Eamon Hamilton, and besides Hamilton's mealy-mouthed singing, the only thing the two bands share is a record deal with Rough Trade. Forget wall-of-sound pop glamour; forget coded references to Dostoevsky; forget ruminative death ballads and arcane concepts. Blazing through 16 songs in less than half an hour-- the longest clocking in at about three-and-a-half minutes, the shortest at seven seconds-- Brakes has turned out a weird, riotous post-(cow)punk screed.
Yeah, cowpunk. A country twang creeps into the album periodically: Check the bright jangle of "NY Pie", where Hamilton affects a hilarious Southern drawl (American punk bands have been mangling British accents forever, and turnabout's fair play) to riff on big-city dreams with the curious but intuitively coherent refrain, "Oh, get me a pony." But the stylistic hopscotch doesn't stop there. The shuffle beat, lockstep bass, and explosive post-punk chorus of "All Night Disco Party" winks slyly in DFA's direction. The 30-second "Pick Up the Phone" precisely apes the Fall, with its careening chords and histrionic vocal rhythm. "I Can't Stand to Stand Beside You" is textbook Mission of Burma, with its abrupt shifts between gliding, repetitive menace and fist-pumping pop-punk choruses, while songs like "You'll Always Have a Place to Stay" and "The Most Fun" trade in aggression for dirgey indie-pop.
If it sounds all over the place, it is, but because Brakes couch their divagations in directness and simplicity, it all hangs together. Their scene-baiting rants and snotty, high-octane punk fill the void vacated by the late, great Mclusky, masters of the pointedly absurd tirade. Like Mclusky, Brakes are at their best when they're sending up the scene and its discontents. "Heard About Your Band" could be an answer to Art Brut's "Formed a Band": "I heard about your band/ Whatever dude!" With lines like "You should have brought Karen O" and "You met Electralene, eh?", Hamilton sneers at trendy rockers, and thankfully, he comes off more like a petty, mean-spirited prick than a self-righteous artiste. "Hi How Are You?" begins with a précis of scenester pick-up lines, including "what do you do," "how do you dress," and "who are your friends," before being abruptly cockblocked with "Won't you shut the fuck up, I'm just trying to watch the band." And Brakes sum up their political stance on "Cheney", which wreaks havoc for all of 10 seconds, stating in its entirety: "Cheney, Cheney, Cheney, stop being such a dick!" Too often, satirical rock gets so caught up in the conceit it forgets to rock, but Hamilton and co. never forget the wisdom of Blues Traveler: "The hook brings you back." Now someone get this man a pony.
