Buzz Bands: Kevin Bronson on the music scene in Los Angeles and beyond

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No need to put the BrakesBrakesBrakes on

11:38 AM PT, May 30 2007

It might have been the most productive 10 minutes Eamon Hamilton ever played. The keyboardist of British Sea Power was doing an acoustic guitar set in a Brighton, England, pub when two tipsy patrons approached and offered to play on the songs.

Brakesbrakesbrakesphoto_2They were Tom and Alex White, the duo behind Brighton luminaries and onetime Mercury Music Prize nominees the Electric Soft Parade. Hamilton was game. "From the first chords, we knew we had something special. They are just sickeningly talented, those two," Hamilton says.

Now they are doing double duty in BrakesBrakesBrakes, the Hamilton project that last week released its second album, "The Beatific Visions." It's a collection of occasionally twangy pop-punk, quick-moving and catchy and built on Hamilton's agitated yelp. (The first album was released as Brakes, before Hamilton renamed the quartet to avoid a conflict with a U.S. band called the Brakes. "We're so good we named ourselves three times," he jokes.)

Like the album, which mixes what Hamilton calls "the great stories and the heartbroken quality" of country music with fun sendups such as the dance number "Spring Chicken," the tour that brings the band to L.A. is all in good fun. Electric Soft Parade is also on the bill, supporting its own new album, "No Need to Be Downhearted."

Says Hamilton: "Tom and Alex will be drinking a lot of coffee."

||| See BrakesBrakesBrakes, the Electric Soft Parade and Pela tonight at Club NME at Spaceland.

||| Download the Electric Soft Parade's "If That's the Case."

||| Download BrakesBrakesBrakes' "Hold Me in the River."

Here's the video for that song:

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About the Blogger
Kevin Bronson
Kevin Bronson has covered emerging and indie music since 2002 in his weekly Buzz Bands column in the Calendar Weekend section of the L.A. Times. He adores caffeine, judicious use of falsetto and the 6-4-3 double play. He abhors exclamation points, modern country and any notion that New York City is the center of the cultural universe. He's older than any music blogger he knows but has been known to pogo. He'll try not to pretend.

Bronson's Buzz Bands show can be heard Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. Pacific time on the Internet radio station LittleRadio.com.

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