Brother (the shit band)

Lots of hype about these little gobshites who are kind of like the Britpop version of Yuck. They sound like every '90s guitar pop band ever from the Longpigs to Dandy Warhols to, yes Oasis. I was all ready to hate, especially since they're known for banging on about how they're the "future of music" (smh rmde). But the album's so damn catchy and enjoyable I regret to say I ended up listening to the whole thing start-to-finish with no interruptions. This made me hate them even more - how dare they make me like them when their sound is so uncannily derivative I should be puking into a bowl?

This is exactly the same feeling I had as the time a really great song started playing on the jukebox with this rad guitar intro and just as I was starting to rock out I heard "Look at the stars/Look how they shine for you" and sank back down in my seat to study the underside of my glass.

Because, try as you might, a lot of bands are 'mostly' not good. Some can chance on a 'good bit' which makes the 'not good' parts seem worse.

None of it was bad. I wouldn't buy this or listen to it for fun, but part of me's thankful that if something's going to be unavoidably popular, it may as well be this.

Pretty sure that Beady Eye is the future of music.

Is that an anagram as well?

They are unmitigated shit. So perhaps, dog latin, you should just accept that you have terrible taste in music and go about your business more happily in future?

you don't have to rub it in, emil.y - I hate myself enough as it is.

awful shit. There was one video I saw when the hype began that I think may have done more damage than good to their 'future of music' shtick. I'll try and dig it out just for mutual hatred. Also they apparently aren't making many friends with other bands for spouting the same stuff at them.

ah yes, obviously, on the the nme.

http://www.nme.com/nme-video/brother---bands-for-2011/738771169001

think this might, genuinely and attempting no hyperbole, be one of the four or five worst albums I've heard in my entire life

What I heard of them, seemed. OK...

There was a rock festival on the BBC iplayer, hosted in stots gaelic, had a set from Brother (is it Bros for short?), one of the main outdoor stages and had literally about 40 people watching, tops.

Scots gaelic, I mean..

Upon playing their debut release - "Darling Buds of May" - on his BBC Radio 1 show, DJ Zane Lowe stated "We like [the song's] classic song structure, it harks back to a time of craft in British song-writing, before the edginess. It’s classic...”[11]

avant l'edginess: le rock brittanique geirhongrais

their songs have 'craft' in the sense that a primary school room full of pieces of pink card covered in elbow macaroni and Copydex have 'craft'

ha. just as things get going, the band have a name rethink forced upon them by the courts.
and the result : viva brother
well done to all concerned.
was wondering why the online G diaries were all viva this and viva that.

You think "Viva Brother" are bad, try the Kayas.

The Slough band came to the attention of another act – an Australian "powerhouse Celtic tribal trio" based in the US who combine "the deep pulse of the didgeridoo, the soaring highs of the bagpipes and tribal percussion".

Viva Brother singer Lee Newell said: "A long time ago in a galaxy far far away three men decided one day that it would be a good idea to start a band called Brother. Many, many years later four frighteningly handsome devils in the desolate, post-apocalyptic wasteland of Slough decided to do the same thing. But something called "litigation" got in the way. However with this out of the way we do finally feel free. Brother is dead. Long Live VIVA BROTHER!"

something called "litigation"

never heard these but am fairly sure they're shit

Walked past them at Glastonbury, they were hilariously awful and their crowd was very small for a New Oasis.

according to a cryptic post by pete gofton on twitter, there was the implication that geffen have thrown a ton of cash at this lot.

http://new.assets.thequietus.com/images/articles/6494/viva_brother_1309260577_crop_550x367.jpg

£150,000 was the advance I heard, which doesn't seem that vast, to be honest.

fair enough... as i said, i was reading between 140 chars, so not privy to the inner detail.

never heard these but am fairly sure they're shit

― LocalGarda, Tuesday, 28 June 2011 15:10 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark

just listened to three songs ("new year's day", "still here" and "darling buds of may"). not bad, not great, basically sound like a grab-bag of 90s britpop moves, most liften from oasis, blur and supergrass. can see why it would appeal, and the hooks are definitely there, but it's not a style i'm terribly fond of.

"lifted"

£150,000

think that's pretty big at the moment. Think a lot of largish advances went out last year and the year before for bands that didn't do quite as well as expected (Hurts)

Hurts was seven figures. That was the real jawdropper of a release.
Mercury took a bath on Monarchy, I believe, and didn't even release their album. Turned out half the songs came from a previous group they hadn't told Mercury about.
The £150,000 sounded a lot because no one had even heard of Brother. Don't think it would have raised many eyebrows had the band been talked about before.

Weighing up how much I'm gonna have to know about these to churn out 3 months worth of lazy zings. Think the name shd be enough for the time being.

thought so. Wasn't there someone else previous to Hurts who got a massive one and then didn't see a lot of sales or whatnot. Am I thinking of little boots? There was someone that made me go UHHHHHHH when I found out what they'd have to recoup.

I hate my memory and lack of will to google

you should hate your caring about shitehouse indie bands too

You can know and not care.

these are the guys that were on letterman with a qpr flag right

nnghh

and u thought it couldnt get worse after doherty

my favourite bit of the UK indie scene is when some terrible fucking band gets hype and fans of other terrible fucking bands that sound and look more or less identical are all like "uuuuurrrrrr these are so shit not like Dave Nob and the Realness" or whatever

i like when one shit band who are basically cunts mocks another probably okay people band for being "students" or "bedwetters" etc...

The QPR flag on Letterman is the best thing they've done.

idk theres always a bit of a dickensian element to the toilet venue tarting scene, every feeb hoping that their band or favourite band gets taken for a ride by the a&r ppl while the less worthy feebs fester resentfully in the gutter

i like when some competent, pleasant and basically unremarkable pop band is elevated to satanic proportions, becoming the dread enemy of all taste and decency, like some cartoon supervillain. i guess it's more fun than admitting that they're a competent, pleasant and basically unremarkable pop band.

oh god no don't call them pop they get terrible radge when you do that you can tell they're not pop they've got like lennon shades and everything

Thread Rename!

OK. That do you?

HAHAHAHA!

feel like they're actually called brother because liam gallagher had that written on his chest in some pictures because he was wearing a 90s man city shirt.

^^^

Actually, "Viva Brother" is an anagram of "Beady Eye"

Fucking emo cunts can't even name their band after their own football team's sponsor. Which if we presume is Slough FC, should be Clear Way.

Which is a marginally better name and probalby not already owned by a new age techno act. Fucking Google unaware motherfuckers.

If they had been Oxford Utd fans c. 1987, the band would have been called "Wang", a considerably better name than "Brother" IMO.

"Crown Paints"

If they were Scousers they'd be called Carlsberg which would be about right.

going to start the band "CR Smith".

Their team is QPR. So they'd have been Gulf Air last season and would have had to change their name this week anyway, cos Gulf Air's contract with QPR ended last week.

Ummm... Bro?

Viva Brother: explosive new footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClcwKgxu2wk

i saw a band called Crown Paints Affair once

Best to gloss over that probably.

Should have gone with Matt

Matt Gloss of Bros

I second that emulsion

i'll get my second coat

i'm gonna need to brush up on my painting and decorating puns

Huts have done pretty well i think haven't they? top 5 album, a biggish hit in loads of countries so Wiki tells me. maybe not good enough for a band with a 7 figure advance though? what were they expected to so i wonder.

*Hurts

He told me he had gicen them a bad review http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15669-famous-first-words/ he wasn't kidding :)

viva la muerte

There's a special No Thanks To: section in their sleeve notes apparently in which The Quietus is mentioned. He brought us up in a recent NME interview as well.

In a really abstract way I feel very bad for him. At the end of the day, all he did was do exactly what his label told him to do and now everything they promised isn't going to happen.

I figured out who Brother remind me of the other day - a Britpop equivalent of Mother 13 from the Scharpling & Wurster Show

http://vimeo.com/3966544

^ the drummer is hot

I was at their "legendary" Met Bar gig, the first after they got signed (and the gig that got them their publishing deal). What was incredible was that in a room almost entirely filled with people with a vested interest in their being successful - label, publicists, publishers and so on - almost everyone thought they were absolutely terrible. Nice lads, I must say (they really don't deserve the vitriol heaped upon them), but not a great band.

well the vitriol is being heaped on their terrible band rather than them personally so they do deserve it, really

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqi3t7cSlG1qhwe64o1_500.jpg

there's all this balderdash about it being 'the NMEs fault' on the NME blogs and your man Luke Lewis had this to say

"Built them up just to destroy them'? That's hardly fair. We covered them early on - a mouthy guitar band comes along saying they're going to the biggest in the world; why wouldn't you do a feature? - and then when the album came along we reviewed it honestly, and said it sucked."

have we had a thread about the idea of building a band up to knock them down and such?

Apparently when they tweeted yesterday that they'd split up, all their followers thought it was an April Fool. That kind of attention to detail (i.e. making any kind of serious annoucnement on April 1st, [and on a Sunday, too!]) is pretty emblematic of their sheer, mind-numbing, unadulteraded thickness, and is why they failed.

they did it at mid day mind, perhaps.. not deliberately.

xpost The slight problem with that is NME knew they were shit from the beginning, but was throwing them at the wall with the Vaccines in the hope one would stick. As it was the Vaccines stuck, and Brother's failure was certain long before the album came out. NME only turned on them because they were shit and they failed. Shit and successful, and I think they'd have been supported to the hilt by NME.

http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/new-music/blog/brother-are-back-and-they-want-to-be-hurts-99914

forever innovators.

I can't hear this but is it true they're trying to sound like 5ive now?

This could be hilarious.

they've gone Romo 20 years too late.

http://i1.cdnds.net/12/25/618x427/tumblr_m5w6dpi4bj1rvdrs8o1_1280.jpg

The saga continues!!

What is this LVLF bullshit?

^ lvlf xtrmntr

Fairly makes my piss boil

Looking forward to their UK funky direction in 2016, two years after their dubstep direction.

I see them alt.country tbh.

What is this LVLF bullshit?

^ lvlf xtrmntr

+ MGMT

Kudos to them not turning Mumforwards

or BRTHR

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/13/viva-brother-lovelife?CMP=twt_gu

Both Newell and Young, it must be said, are understandably keener to talk about Lovelife than Viva Brother. They talk about how they, and the three other former members of Viva Brother, who now serve as the backing band, share a two-bedroom apartment and work in coffee shops to pay the bills.

"And why aren't they here?"

"Who?"

"Your backing band members."

"I don't understand the question."

Could Lovelife succeed where Viva Brother failed?

wait i can save you 500 words here

I'm never going to be convinced that any project that Lee Newell is involved in is going to yield anything that I'll give a shit about, but observing his music career is very much the old car crash cliche. I really shouldn't be giving this chap my time, and as far as listening to his music is concerned, I don't. But something in me keeps wanting to see what the hell he does or comes out with next, even if I don't care for the content. I'm fully expecting him in a couple of years time to come out with another new incarnation in another genre and it'll be "oh, Lovelife, you know I didn't mean that man, it was only a half-hearted thing". Observing him, and his mates, trying on every conceivable hat possible in some kind of quest for fame and recognition and trying to be taking seriously while making a plank of himself has become the entire appeal, it seems. As far as the music is concerned, I honestly don't care at all!

Many musicians over the years have been lauded for their ability to genre-hop successfully, and when it's done well the genre-hopping comes across as having its basis in a love for music. This guy seems to be so motivated by other factors entirely... he's already been through his emo incarnation and his Britpop incarnation, and he seems to have had absolutely no faith in either (as much as he's 'talked the talk' at the time). He honestly gives me no reason to believe that he means what he's doing this time around, and it's only going to be a matter of time before a new incarnation comes around and it'll be "oh guys, I was only showboating last time, I'm making the music that really matters to me now. Honestly."

He'll do something with musical theatre eventually

You mean, like his version of American Idiot or something? :D

people that sincerely want to "make it" in the music business in 2012 are the saddest creatures on earth

free mixtape
http://nickydigital.com/2012/08/lovelife-pre-party-jamz-volume-141-mix-tape/

Track List:
Fever Ray – Triangle
The Weeknd – The Party & The After Party
Blood Orange – Sutphin Boulevard
Lana Del Ray – Diet Mountain Dew
Frank Ocean – Swim Good
The XX – Islands
TV On The Radio – Crying
Purity Ring – Obedear
Broken Bells – Your Head Is On Fire
Primal Scream – Higher Than The Sun

volume 141 ?

blimey.

http://www.nme.com/news/viva-brother/67645

hmm, and if we take the singles chart into consideration?

Also, which month did they achieve the lofty lp chart position?