Drowned in Sound

Search



Bromheads Jacket cover

Bromheads Jacket: Dits From The Commuter Belt

no votes
?
by Will Dean

First things first, pop-pickers. When first encountering the name Bromheads Jacket, one would think that the Jacket in question was an actual jacket. Y'know, like in Blink-182's Take Off Your Pants And....

Unfortunately, and to much dismay, it transpires that the Jacket in question is, in fact, a layer of fluff on lead singer Tim Hampton's old pet mouse. Or so is claimed, anyway.

Right, onwards: can somebody please tell them that 'Bromheads' should quite bloody clearly have an apostrophe. How did this get through the net to the point that the band are releasing their debut album and nobody has noticed that their name sounds like something adolescent boys from Bromsgrove do when they first 'buy' a copy of The Sunday Sport? It's possessive, for Harry Evans' sake. Did their schooldays not teach them anything?

And this is from a band who met at university. Although, from this correspondent's experience, basic English is not your regular student's forte.

That's grammar out of the way. What else is there? Oh yeah, the music. It's surprisingly good. And music fans will probably consider the songs more important than the punctuation, so we'll give the Jacket doubt's benefit here.

There is, however, a simian-shaped elephant in the room. Yep, Bromheads sound a lot like Arctic Monkeys. Ker-ching.

There are only so many albums about the life of suburban late-teens sung in colloquial accents that the average punter can take, especially as Original Pirate Material and Whatever You Say I Am... move further into the horizon. So, it'll be interesting to see if Bromheads can take the baton and run with it

For now, run with it they do. Dits From The Commuter Belt has some great moments. 'Poppy Bird', the story of a chap following a girl off the tube to return a book, is fantastic. A little novella of a song that tells a story as eloquently as Mike Skinner could at his peak.

'Fight Music For The Fight' is the tale of that kid we all remember from school: skinny, not too popular, gets to 17 and turns into a steroid-munching colossus. It's also a masterclass in suburban pop story-telling.

It's a bit forced at times, but once you get past the reel of references to things like sovereign rings, Dad's top-shelf films, Harvey Nicks' and Samsung, Dits... is a lot of bloody fun. Suburbia in proelia.

  • Bromheads Jacket 7 / 10

Chindie

Chindie

A U.K. Phenomenon, however it is heavily inspired by American preppy clothing trends. A chindie is a chav who, upon discovering he looks 'smart' in shirts under pastel colour jumpers and khaki pants/faded jeans, wears them all the time. He then proceeds to experiment with smarter clubs than the usual chav haunts (which play soul destroying r'n'b/rap crap) and experiences middle of the road bands e.g. Kaiser Chiefs and Oasis. They 'discover' these bands, and spread them amongst their mates. Chindies spread. They piss off indie kids because they claim to like independant, fun music but really are sheep. Oasis and Kaiser chiefs are repetitive to the extreme, basically rap with guitars. Arctic Monkeys have mastered this form of music, and dress like the common chindie. They became huge because they are chindies, possibly the first band to be so after Oasis led the way. The word chindie is a mixture of chav/indie kid, although this is highly insulting to honest indie kids everywhere.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Chindie


^

that may be the dumbest thing i have ever read.


But

That's really annoying though because Arctic Monkeys are one of my favourite bands and I would never consider them in the same breath as Oasis.

On one hand we have a consistently funny, observant, self-checking, self-depricating band that ranges from mega catchy idiotic dancefloor hits to managing to craft gorgeous, hearbreaking songs - even when comparing women to buses, or bums. On the other we have a band who relies on catch all phrases as lyrics, loutish behaviour and a downright insolent refusal to move on.

The Arctic Monkeys made more of a step forward from their first album to their first EP than Oasis have done in 10 years.

Sorry for the rant. It's something I feel strongly about.


The truth hurts

And the truth is that these and the Arctic Monkey are no better (or different) than the Ordinary Boys or Hard-Fi. Bland and unintelligent. Disappointing from a city that produces as talented and interesting songwriters as Jarvis Cocker, Richard Hawley and Kate Jackson. The chavs are welcome to this lot.


But

Gutter_Boy, one cannot argue that the Arctic Monkeys album was received high acclaim from wide ranging publications.

It just cannot be that an album would receive maximum ratings from the publications most relevant to it (NME rarely gives 10/10 ratings, Guardian five stars, UNCUT five stars, this website - basically 10/10) and still be called 'bland and unintelligent'. Things just don't happen like that, people supposedly in the know and with the ability to review records don't all get it wrong at exactly the same time.

Side note: Kate Jackson doesn't write the songs for The Long Blondes. She wrote Seperated By Motorways and a few b-sides but that's it.


i have read worse

i wouldnt disagree with him though, i wouldnt call them chindie but relatively poor indie does seem to be the thing where chavs are concerned really. And to R12 just because bands recieve critical acclaim doesnt automatically make them intelligent or good in any remote way, it just means that the particular reviewer (ie independant person with own opinion) happened to enjoy it. This is why i dont really care what any reviewer thinks of my musical taste (no offense DiS)


Perhaps..

..but for all that Definitely Maybe is still massively superior to Whatever You Say I Am...

I despise the word chav, in fact I hate almost everything about that description- what the guy at the top seems to be saying is 'I hate poor/smartly dressed/club going people! Look at them in their jeans, how dare they like music with guitars. And rap music! Grrr!'

Cock.


Gosh

And you sound really interesting.


absolutely true. but irrelevant.

that urban dictionary entry and wholly true.

and chavs are scum.

however, i like bromheads jacket, and if i was to go up to a chav [i live in south east london, there are many] and say name a rock/indie band, they'd come at me with Arctic Monkeys, or even worse they'd say a band that i've now classified as a music swear word, panic at the disco.

i think this album is great, but when the chavscum get hold of it, i'll most probably throw my album at them. hard.


Sidestepping the social class debate...

Isn't the main problem that they're really really boring?


i cant believe you people

still talking about definitely maybe. really. i'd be happy if i see monkeys' singer can actually "sing" one day.


.

It is awful when these bands sell records to lots of people and (this is the really bad bit) unbearably this includes lots of working class, you know, common types. I bet they don’t know the words to all the b-sides and don’t know which record label the band is on, and they probably wear football shirts sometimes. Don’t these people understand that they can’t just go around buying genres of music I enjoy, how am I meant to define myself now? Lets ban these types from either making, enjoying, or buying music, or if they really feel they have to, lets at least limit them to certain types of music that I have no regard such as ‘rap with guitars’.


Yes...

Better still, let's sterilise poor uneducated people then in a generation or so we'll live in a musical utopia & we can all happily listen to trail of dead or whatever.


wut?

they really dont sound like arctic monkeys. at all.


why dont we all

just listen to the record and decide if you like it. i do like it, and i don't care whether chavs or chindies or goths or whoever the fuck else does or does not like it, i do, stop talking shit. i agree that they don't sound like arctic monkeys, and i disagree with 'i hate that these bands that sell records to lots of people' blah blah blah, because for one i dont think this record will sell to lots of people, and that alone makes you wrong.


But that's like saying

Why can't the Jews and the Muslims get along?

Things just get in the way.


the major gripe i have

is that it gets people who have no ounce of music knowledge coming up to you in the street or at work, you like music you heard this its fuckin mint, no it aint its the same shit repeated 11 times and sold to retatrds. go back to watching the fucking x factor.

it will be the same wiht cricket, i have been watching cricket scince i was about 3 and england won the ashes and everyones a fucking expert on giles or monty or "harmys troubles" the guy was troubeld on his first tour back when england were shit and hes troubled now he'll perform as he always does. nothing worse than bandwagon jumpers.


yeah

i agree with the thing about people who don't know about music, i've been at work tonight and people have mentioned the kooks, twice, ordinary boys, and a girl went to see the killers the other night, now i'm not a big fan of the killers but this is symptomatic of the things i hate about music at the moment, because a lot of people who might actually like music and like the killers prob couldn't go to that gig cos of people like her. we had an argument about it, and i was called a 'music snob' which i think i might take as a compliment. she listed in her top 10 bands of all time boys to men...


er

so gigs should be exclusive to 'true music fans'? people can like whatever the hell they want, so they've only been exposed to mainstream, commercially successful bands and like them... who gives a toss? this means that you can take pride in your 'music snob' status because you are the minority, if everyone was name-checking incredibly obscure bands that you'd never heard of all the time it would probably piss you off


Awesome

I do wish people would stop talking about Bromheads Jacket without being unable to mention Arctic Monkeys or Milburn. Arctic Monkeys are boring now, and Milburn lost their credibility when they released a perfectly glossy debut album, losing all the gritty energy that made them stand out. Bromheads Jacket are beyond, awesome.


it's ok

Well this band is ok and ok is all they ever gonna be. Saw them in Amsterdam just before Christmas and it is really sad when there best song was a Nirvana cover, not even a good cover, just an attempt to win same fan base of youngsters that wouldn't recognize track.


GREAT album

and even better live!