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No need to put the BrakesBrakesBrakes on

12:38 PM 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:

Bookmark it: 

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