Eamon at Galapagos 1 March · 2 April 08
merryswankster.com Here’s another review from Galapagos on 1st March, with photos.
In retrospect we probably did Eamon no favors by slating him to play amid the still smoldering wreckage of Titus Andronicus’ energy bomb. A more prototypical singer/songwriter, armed only with a weathered acoustic guitar and a microphone, might have shrunken away from the challenge. Our Eamon responded with a surprising bug eyed intensity. The spiky rock numbers from the Brakes’ songbook were delivered with full-throated gusto. The sweet ballads were aided by a lonesome vulnerability. Really, it was all unreasonably compelling for such an unadorned set.
Eamon at the Slaughtered Lamb · 17 March 08
gigcam.blogspot.com Slaughtered Lamb, London, 18 Feb (with photos)
Eamon Hamilton. Absolutely hammered. Not me, him. Well he seemed fairly drunk and muttered something about liquor. Despite a couple of false starts and a few duff notes, this only added to the fun. Eamon proudly joked about how professional he was with his set list taped to the back of his guitar, and then half way through said to hell with it and played what he wanted or people requested. Then later he started playing a song he’d already played. Everyone in the crowd seemed to be lovin’ it.
This was the third and final performance of a three night residency for Eamon at the Slaughtered Lamb, where he had played on a Monday night for three consecutive weeks. I was disappointed that we couldn’t get to one of the first two as Jay Jay Pistolet was playing, but tonight’s support were fine.
Towards the end he annnounced he was leaving the UK – fortunately this only meant that he was going to America (New York I think he said) for a few months to record the next Brakes album. Highlights were Emmett’s favourite – All Night Disco Party, a caustic Heard About Your Band, a heartbreaking No Return, and a lively Spring Chicken.
Eamon at Galapagos 1 March · 4 March 08
My Wave Blog Eamon did a terrific job on his own last night, whiskey aside… It always amazes me when a guy as shy, sweet and polite as Eamon, explodes into punk rock political protest songs. For the photos click HERE
The Crepuscular Hour Click photo for Eamon Hamilton Gallery.
Secret gig review · 17 February 08
This gig was so secret it didn’t appear on the website/myspace (this review is the first mention of it)
hellisforhipsters.wordpress.com The Hand in Hand, Brighton
There are secret gigs, and then there are secret gigs. I mean, there are those shows when a big name band plays a slightly too small venue to try out new material or create a buzz, and everyone is alerted by text message earlier in the day, and the press all know and there’s a huge guest list and a gaggle of hardcore fans congregating around the doors in the afternoon desperate to get in – and then there is Eamon Hamilton, erstwhile British Sea Power member and frontman of Rough Trade recording artistes Brakes, playing a solo acoustic set at my local. A show announced that same day solely via a handwritten sheet of paper stuck on the pub door. That nobody seems to have read.
Brakes are a popular, hip and very credible indie band, with two critically-acclaimed LPs under their belts. They have toured Europe and America, where they are particularly well-loved, and in their hometown of Brighton they’ve previously headlined the 1150-capacity Corn Exchange. The Hand in Hand struggles to hold 50 people. It is a small cosy room attached to the Kemptown micro-brewery, usually haunted by ruddy-faced men in late middle age who have little truck with the vagaries of fashion or the arty whims of esoteric pop groups. But presumably tonight the regulars have been usurped by an influx of youthful and enthusiastic Brakes fans, keen to hear Eamon perform stripped-down versions of all their favourite numbers? Erm, no. Like I said, this was a secret gig. He really hasn’t told anybody. And it’s pretty much the usual crowd.
The note said from 7, so I got there at 8.30, thinking it’ll probably be full, I probably won’t get in, but it’s not far to go home again and – oh, okay, there’s about a dozen people here as usual. Three or four nattily-dressed youngsters at the bar, getting in the way and laughing loudly at each other, but otherwise just the usual old soaks with their dogs and balding blokes in fleeces talking about cars and taxes. No buzz. No sign of any live music being planned. I nurse my pint of Old Trout for an hour (the Dragon’s Blood was off), reading the local free paper from cover to cover, watching the backs of the guys stood in front of me, wondering if maybe I misread the notice and it’s all happening somewhere else, or on another night. Someone knocks a glass of wine off the table, pushing past to get to the toilet. It’s filling up, anyway.
Then about 9.30 a beer crate is placed in the far corner and Eamon climbs on top of it, clutching a battered acoustic guitar. I stand up and move forward. Well, by a couple of feet. He’s completely unamplified, not even a microphone, and the regulars are doing their best to ignore this unwanted interruption of their evening. This is less a British Sea Power-style situationist performance in an unusual location, and more a Brakes song brought to life – as in, ‘won’t you shut the fuck up, I’m just trying to watch the band.’
So Eamon is singing ‘Ring a Ding Ding,’ possibly, but it’s hard to tell as I’m stuck behind this grey-haired scouser holding forth to his cronies about how his ex-wife is getting fuck all money from him, she’s getting a fiver a week and that’s all, she can try living on that and see how she likes it. Eamon is delivering the homesick country blues of ‘NY Pie,’ but the ex-wife has gone to university you see, she thinks she’s better than him now, she says she hasn’t got a boyfriend but he knows she’s seeing this fucking hippy, some long-haired twat – ‘Porcupine or Pineapple,’ Eamon wonders, in the manner of a skinny, English Black Francis, but his daughter’s gone to university now as well and she’s just as bad as her mum, she keeps ringing him up and giving it all this, she’s fucking 17, thinks she fucking knows it all, she’s got no use for him now, he says to her, who’s been telling you things, who’s been putting ideas into your head? And on the other side of me, sat at the bar, a bearded young groover is telling his girl yah, I rilly wanna go to ATP this year, but I don’t know, the line-up just doesn’t do it for me – Eamon airs a new song, possibly entitled ‘Consumer Producer Chicken Egg,’ in the same tradition of directness and brevity as Brakes classics ‘Cheney,’ ‘Comma Comma Comma Full Stop’ and ‘Pick Up the Phone,’ which are also performed tonight. ”These kids, they all think that’s great music – that’s a fucking university education for you, innit? I don’t fucking understand it, it’s just weird. It’s not music. It’s like speaking another fucking language, innit?”
Afterwards Eamon is at the bar, meeting his public. “I usually play with a band called Brakes,” he’s saying. ”No, B-R-A-K-E-S…” So are they all your own songs, this bloke wants to know, have you ever tried selling your songs to other people? I know it’s all just hype, but at the end of the day they need a good song, don’t they?
They do. “Put Phil Collins on!” someone shouts desperately as soon as Eamon finishes, with the genuine Brakes hit single ‘All Night Disco Party.’ The bar staff oblige.
Ruby Lounge Manchester review · 14 February 08
follyfollyfolly.blogspot.com Ruby Lounge, Manchester, 12 Feb (visit the link for a photo)
The Setlist is also below including new songs.
One thing that is great about Brakes is hearing four musicians play short, sharp, fast and loud songs. With electrical instruments and amplification. So how was this going to work acoustically?
OK so obviously the electrical instruments, band and loudness were missing but what came through – mostly – was the quality of some of the songs. Given the brevity of some of Brakes songs (first single Pick Up The Phone clocked in at a mighty 24 seconds), it can be easy to dismiss them as a novelty. But listening to the songs played and sung by Eamon with just an acoustic guitar showed there is more to the songs than either noise or speed. The ones that worked tended to be the slowies and the “heartbreakers” (in Eamon’s words) such as No Return or Fell In Love With A Girl. But even Spring Chicken and Heard About Your Band felt fresh, even lively, delivered acoustically.
Eamon’s set:
Spring Chicken
Ring A Ding Ding
If I Should Die Tonight
“Don’t Take Away My Space Man” (new song)
Heard About Your Band
You’re So Pretty
No Return
Beatific Visions
Margherita
Pick Up The Phone
Cheney (three times)
“Thought, Thought Until It Had Been Thunk” (new song)
Fell In Love With A Girl
On Your Side
All Nite Disco Party
Hold Me In The River
What’s In It For Me?
“Consumer Producer Chicken Egg” (new song)
Porcupine or Pineapple
NY Pie
Comma Comma Comma Fullstop
Take A Whiff Of Me (Leadbelly song)
subcity.org Brel, Glasgow, 8 Feb: A well-rounded, mellow but quirky acoustic set from the lead singer of the Brakes. The performance was mature but not aloof, with Eamon coming across as a very likeable and very entertaining performer.
Leeds Faversham review · 12 February 08
dalliance.co.uk Leeds Faversham, 10 Feb.
An unassuming presence on the stage – just a slim man dressed in black jeans, shirt and boots with an acoustic guitar stood where the melee of musical instruments had been strewn earlier. The rest of the stage was darkened so a single spotlight could pick Eamon Hamilton and his glass of red wine out on the stage. But there was a glint in the eye and a curl to the lips that quickly became a gurn Mick Jagger would be proud of as he launched into Spring Chicken and suddenly the character of the Brakes is made clear.
It is Eamon Hamilton with his set list taped to the back of his guitar introducing his songs with a couple of lines of throw away quips that suddenly give the often taken as ironic but nevertheless furious guitar work a bare bones openness. Ring A Ding Ding is about George Bush and Tony Blair – and we thought he meant proper Cowboys – and Cheney is “still sadly relevant”.
Eamon is on the road to try out new songs but he only has two of them. They both sound like a continuation of the impressive Beatific Visions album and as someone shouts for Mobile Communication and is obliged one of us wishes he had shouted for Porcupine or Pineapple.
“The next one is a heart breaker” he says. No Return rings out and cuts through the air as the finest song in an impressive collection. He carries on a little after that but the night has been crowned.
A post-gig Eamon amiably spent a few minutes chatting. He tells us which of the five is his favourite in Girls Aloud – Nicola – and that Brakes will be recording their new album in April to release not long after.
Tonight has been the best night so far for Eamon.
Nottingham Social review · 9 February 08
fit-for-nothing.blogspot.com Nottingham Social, 7 Feb.
Complete with his set list jotted down on back of his guitar Eamon works his way through some of the Brakes lighter moments, along with a smattering of new tracks. He also plays a few of the quicker numbers such as ‘Porcupine or Pineapple’ and ‘Ring A Ding Ding’, which still come over well. It’s a very friendly affair in front of us hardcore fans.
Near the end he announces he’s going to do two more songs but then starts to take requests from the crowd, playing ‘No Return’ and ‘Heard About Your Band’ before returning to his set list. He closes the set with another request ‘Comma Comma Comma Full Stop’ and asks the requester to count him in. He comes back to encore with ‘Jackson’ and a very brief new number.
Brakes in March 2008 Q Mag · 6 February 08
Track reviews, page 126.
Brakes Xposure Session, 3 stars: listen here
Last year, Brighton four-piece Brakes demonstrated a capacity for experimentation on their second album, The Beatific Visions. The same free spirit colours this three-song session, which features an oddball cover of We Saw Jerry’s Daughter by absurdist 80’s alt-rockers Camper Van Beethoven. Eamon Hamilton’s quavering vocals and bouncy indie guitars make for peculiar bedfellows.
Eamon and Tom at SoundsXP · 4 February 08
soundsxp.com Includes lots of Brakes news…
Soundsxp: As an avid fan, what can you tell us about progress towards the new album?
Eamon: We were holed up in a tiny room in Abingdon, quite near here, for 5 nights. It was bloody freezing! We ended up with 4 new songs and I may be playing one tonight!
Rough Trade have been sweet about it, giving us great support for the albums. We’re going to take things really slowly as we feel the 2nd album was too rushed – we weren’t pushed, we just rushed it ourselves. We’re having a longer gestation period for the next lot of songs, we don’t want to go through that kind of panic again!
Soundsxp: Your first album (Give Blood) is considered to be definitive Brakes and the 2nd (The Beatific Visions) more rounded, will the new songs be classic Brakes?
Eamon: ‘Classic Brakes’ I like the sound of that (laughs). As we went to Nashville for the 2nd album, we’re hoping to get to Memphis this time round (laughs again).
I wash dishes to make extra money when the band isn’t playing, and I find this is a really good time to create new songs and tunes.
Soundsxp: Eamon, your acoustic tour effectively kicks off tonight – What can we expect from it, new and old Brakes songs? or something different altogether?
Well, you can expect new and old Brakes songs… played acoustically (laughs uncontrollably). We write songs that are meant to sound like they should be played and sung round the campfire, so it should work acoustically. I have no lyrics yet, I’ll be making them up as I’m actually singing the songs. I’ll play one new one tonight, two tomorrow and so on.
Soundsxp: Can Brakes fans expect to see you at any festivals this summer?
Eamon: We’re planning to give the festivals a miss this year, we’ve done Truck for the past 5 years, I guess it could be renamed the Brakes-Tuck Festival or something.
We don’t expect to be playing until the end of the summer at least, as I said we’re gonna really take our time over the new stuff.
London Koko review and video · 3 February 08
gigcam.blogspot.com Wahey! Unsurprisingly, Eamon did Brakes songs only. Some Brakes songs are obviously going to sound good solo on an acoustic guitar (On Your Side, You’re So Pretty) but I was surprised by how some of the punchier numbers (Porcupine Or Pineapple) translated just as well. At the end he announced he was going to do two more songs. I shouted out for Comma Comma, and after he had played Cheney he asked me to count him in for Comma Comma Comma Full Stop. So I gave it my best Ramones style Wun, Chew, Free, Fawah!
Here’s my video of Eamon Hamilton playing the Brakes song You’re So Pretty at the gig. There was a lot of crowd chatter during his set, as you can hear on this clip. For his first song, Eamon played a one verse one chorus version of Hi How Are You, Brakes’ paean to audience members keeping quiet at gigs during quiet songs, but its message went unheeded!