Brigade

Lights

Written by: TL on 18/05/2006 00:33:22

Now if you’re the bigger brother of the much debated lead singer of “Fightstar” who just released an equally debated but mostly successful album, now seems to be about the time to release your own album with your own band. If this seems logical to you, then welcome to what might have been the thought process of Will Simpson. The big brother of “Fightstar’s” Charlie, and his band has none the less released their debut full length into the slipstream of the critically acclaimed “Grand Unification”, and it’s hard not to line up the brothers for a showdown. I won’t do so however (All this was just to give you guys some background information. Haha!)

If Brigade bears any resemblance to Fightstar though, it is their seeming tendency of taking the angst filled and fragile, combining it with darker and heavier parts and still making it sound like something sky-bound. Will sings with a voice reminding me of the one of Brian Molko from “Placebo” but sounding somewhat more youth- and hopeful. Just listen to him on the killer tracks “Magneto” and “Made to Wreck” and you’ll know what I mean. When he sings “Indiiiiifference” it actually reminds me more of “Busted” than his kid brother ever did. Don’t let that scare you though, because for every line like this, there’s a darker counterpart like on “Queenie” and “Meet Me At My Funeral”, and for every catchy flying guitar-line, there’s a heavy dissonant riff too.

Brigade has created a sound that’s really hard not to like, and I would be lying if I said I could not already be counted among their fans. If I had to say something negative about this record though, it would be that if you listen to it as a whole, the songs are much alike in sound and structure. After you’ve heard and fallen in love with the first 5 tracks, you tend to get enough, and you forget about the rest of the tracks, and that’s a shame, because the songs are all quite good in their own right. The only exception to this is the final track “The Hits The Scrapes” which seems to attempt to achieve a larger sound not far from something you’d expect from Fightstar, but doesn’t really succeed at doing so. These flaws are substantial enough to just barely drag the album down to a large

7

Download: Magneto, Made to Wreck, See You At My Funeral
For the fans of: Fightstar, Placebo
Listen: MySpace

Release date 01.05.2006
Mighty Atom Records

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