The Broken Family Band

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4...according to our Business Lady on Fri 03 Apr, 2009.

The broken Family band have an illustrious history as a hard working group of folks. 'Salivating' is the first single from their seventh studio album 'Please and thank you'. I remember the band being far more whimsical and folky than this single suggests yet it appears that time has made the band leaner. No sign of the cute backing vocals, accordians and banjo's that had bolstered previous releases, now we get streamlined rock music performed with style and confidence. 'Salivating' is the sound of a band comfortable making indie rock singles and this is a charming one. Simple and well delivered. I still have problem getting over the american drawl of singer Steve Adems vocal delivery (these guys ain't american as far as i know) but it's not quite as strong as it used to be. I prefer the b-side 'love your man, love your woman (soft eyes version)' as it's a real catchy number with a sterling chorus a much more relaxed, natural vocal delivery. Good stuff.

The Broken Family Band has announced it will be releasing its seventh album, Please And Thank You (COOKCD491) on Monday 20th April, which will be preceded by a single Salivating (FRYCD385) on Monday 6th April.
Mixed by veteran producer George Shilling, Please and Thank You is, according to singer and lyricist Steve Adams, an album loosely centered around the uncontroversial yet indeterminate idea of “being nice to people”. From its stomping opener ‘Please Yourself’, a sceptical look at hipsters (with ‘cocaine in your moustache’) offended by his cheap guitar with nods, lyrically and musically (and not accidentally) to Elvis Costello’s classic masturbation anthem ‘Pump It Up’, to its conclusion, a gentle ode to burying the hatchet, country-tinged ‘Old Wounds’ (the only trace of their folksy origins), it covers a lot of ground. The gentle ‘Mimi’ is about a beautiful girl who worked in an 'adult' shop, according to its writer, while the drably titled ‘St Albans’, effectively a short story about a man who went to the wrong place to have sex with an Eastern European girl set to an ominous melody, started out as the more exotic ‘St Petersburg’, a title that was deemed to be “unrealistic”. ‘Borrowed Time’, with its anachronistic plea to “keep on choogling, even when we’re tired”, neatly captures the band’s split personality while ‘Cinema Vs House’, a witty dissection of the eternal dating seesaw, starts sweetly and ends up as a rock juggernaut. Eight years in, The Broken Family Band have gradually shed the accordionists, the cute girl singers, the banjo players, even the American drawl, and reduced themselves to the unchanged core of Adams, bassist Gavin Johnson, guitarist Jay Williams and drummer Micky Roman. And they’ve made their best album so far.

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