Academy: Turin Brakes
Put simply the Turin Brakes gig was supberb. They chose Birmingham to kick off only 3 tour dates to promote the new album, it’s not quanity but quality that counts and on Thursday night we had both. I don’t want to dismiss or put the support band down, they were an aquired taste probably not suited to the Brakes fanbase. It was one woman with a small guitar and supporting band, reminding me of Kate Rogers, the drummer seemed as if he would drop off to sleep any moment, but as I said an aquired taste, much more likely to fit in better at a Fiona Apple gig.
The set kicked off with “They Can’t Buy The Sunshine”, with a good lighting rig and screen showing various video clips. It’s hard to say what the Brakes played, far easy to say what they didn’t play, “72″ was missed off the list. They played most of the new album a lot from the first album and a couple of tracks from the second album. The crowd were absolutly amazing, really getting into it. “Jack In A Box” rocked the roof off the Academy as did “Ether Song”. A sombre mood was set for the seemingly anthemic “Feeling Oblivian” the crowd sang along, most with thier eyes closed. A line in the lyrics of Feeling Oblivian resounded around my space with much more meaning than ever before due to health concerns realted to that line in that song.
The gig went by so fast, Olly had put more of a twang into his lyrics and Gale turned his guitar into a truely metalic geeeetar. Olly was very communicative with the crowed and they both seemed genniunly pleased to be back gigging, admiting that they had forgot how much fun it was.
The Brakes are back, the band that got lost in the Ether have found their way to the ears and hearts of far more people as the new album “Jack In A Box”, goes in the album chart at number 9 and gets the band new fans who wouldn’t normally go for that kind of music. They have a truely impressive range of songs to chose from and on Thursday we were treated to about 90 minutes of classic Brakes.