Another Form of Relief

A friend messaged me on MSN last night demanding “more alt country” be featured on this here blog. I assured him that given how much music I like that falls into the genre, a fair amount of my posts would fit the bill. I scanned through the last couple of months to see what I’d been posting, and noticed a distinct lack of alt country. The decision to leave out alt country music wasn’t a particularly conscious one on my part. I think I’ve just been on something of a power pop kick lately going by the amount of posts that fall into that genre.

So in a small attempt to rectify this inbalance, tonight we’re going to sit around a campfire and have a listen to The Broken Family Band. Of course by campfire I mean a computer monitor, but that doesn’t seem to really add to the atmosphere all that well.

Anyways, The Broken Family Band are a four piece alt-country band from Cambridge. That’s the Cambridge in the south of England, which gives them even more of a unique appeal. The UK isn’t known for it’s top notch country bands, so it’s nice to see at least one band giving it a shot. They have released at least four albums and two EPs, regularly play live, and more impressively, have still managed to hold down their day jobs.

They make a kind of jangly country music, but without ever crossing the line into just downright awful generic country. The songs are melodic and their lyrics insightful. I could go on trying to describe their sound, but I think their Myspace page describes it best: “Sounds like Pavement gently wrestling with Buck Owens on a carpet of ironic bullshit”. And if you aren’t convinced by that, you don’t have a soul.

MP3 The Broken Family Band - The Perfect Gentleman (The King Will Build A Disco EP, 2002)
MP3 The Broken Family Band - Song Against Robots (Cold Water Songs, 2003)
MP3 The Broken Family Band - Walking Back To Jesus Part Two (Jesus Songs, 2004)
MP3 The Broken Family Band - Honest Man’s Blues (Welcome Home Loser, 2005)
MP3 The Broken Family Band - I’m Thirsty (expired) (Balls, 2006)

If you make it through all of those, you’ll quickly discover that ‘I’m Thirsty’ has a pretty different sound to the rest of them. That’s because for their newest album, ‘Balls’, they decided to try and get themselves away from the country tag and play around with other genres. So at times they find themselves rocking out like here, and at others messing around with things like metal and funk. Yet somehow it all retains the same kind of appeal that their original country outings did.

‘Balls’ is also picking them up for some rather impressive critical acclaim and a ton of positive press, so that may actually be able to give up those day jobs after all. As usual, you can find out more about The Broken Family Band on their website and send them a friendly “hello!” on their Myspace.