Posted by Erik MacAlpine, 6/18/01 at 8:20:42 PM.
Oi! Listen up ya, these lads are good and they've got a story. So turn down the tellie and bone up on your Brother. Every year the swallows return to San Juan Capistrano. On 4-7-2000 BROTHER made their own return there and swallowed hard on the reality that they were lucky to be alive. The Coach House never rocked so hard.
Roel Kuiper get's it all on cranking from the very start on Thetimeisnow. A rolling beat from the Dutchman's kit is fast joined up by the "Flailing Axeman" Rick Kurek, whose gritty wah wah guitar blends seamlessly with the more primitive wah wah of the didgerido. Bagpipes come in at just the right moment to make the sound a real screamer. BROTHER's brothers, Angus and Hamish Richardson, put the basics of this uniquely Australian celtic sound together more than ten years ago. These talented mates had a great time of it touring in the States since the early 90's but a wicked car crash last year threatened to end it all. As Hamish says on the CD, he was sitting in the car with the dust settling about him thinking "..that's it. It's all over."
Details are hard to come by about this ordeal, but whatever they were a profound change in BROTHER's outlook and music followed. Their music was never brainless riffs for gearheads, but BROTHER have changed since their ordeal. Listen to the Crow on 1995's Exit to Screechville and then again on This Way Up. Is it possible that it got just a little grittier, a little more snarling? All the same the lads are a more introspective lot on this effort for certain. Looking inward ain't done nothing to their swagger though, as they jolt about on the stage in leather kilts and Doc Martins.
Give it Away seems to plead for us to give up all our preconceptions, to give away all we believe and move ahead. The driving beat behind Give it Away and the more ponderous bars of Shadowman make a winding night road out of a pair of headphones and closed eyes. Rainmaker calls us quietly and deeper into the dreamy desolation of oz before energizing us with riffy lyrics and one of the best hooks on the whole CD. "Look for the man in the beggar's clothes. Where is he? Nobody knows. Once upon a time is an easy lie."
The music moves like drifting sand from the enormous desert of possibility through the pinch of the now. We realize that no matter how many futures there may be out there, they congeal into one past. A past we've been lucky to share with our BROTHER. And sometimes just when you think it's all over, the music returns to coda.
So give it a listen mates. No matter which way you slide it into the tray, This Way Up will make you think a little and rock a lot.
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