Album Review : The Brute Chorus - Send Me A Message

The tragedy is, The Brute Chorus should have been amazing. When we first saw them at the 100 Club on Oxford Street eons ago, vocalist James Steel’s sheer rock 'n' roll exuberance was irresistible. Even then though, there were questions about how the foot-stomping set would translate on record without the spectacle of Steel’s stage show or the raw edge of live performance.

It was perhaps a weakness felt by the band when they made the decision to record the whole album in front of a live audience, in one take. Even so, the album has been so carefully mixed and produced that it’s easy to forget the presence of the crowd until the close of each song. What, you’re left wondering, is the point of releasing a live album without all the rough edges of live performance?

Perhaps fittingly, it’s Steel – the band’s strong point live – who grates most on the recorded debut. His stage persona is crafted around some 1950s rock mutation, all bendy knees and pointy-toed shoes, and it brilliantly offsets the bass tread of the Brute Chorus’ threadbare sound. On record, you realise that much of the energy in the music is an illusion generated by the live show. Without Steel’s on-stage contortions, his vocals sound almost reedy, far too self-aware and, most jarringly of all against a musical backdrop that borrows so much from American tradition, painfully English.

The problem is accentuated by Steel’s vocal delivery which on many songs treads a thin line between spoken poetry and rap. You get the feeling that the frontman desperately wants to adopt an American accent to add credibility to his hard-won rhyming couplets, but instead self-consciously settles for an uncomfortable posh London twang. Opener ‘Hurcules’ is a case in point:

“Cos I ain’t got the power and I ain’t got the strength/Oh no I ain’t got the width and I ain’t got the length/It don’t matter which way the chips might fall/Cos if it weren’t for bad luck I would have no luck at all."

Steel’s emphasis on the spoken word means the Brute Chorus often have little left to offer by way of vocal melody. This wouldn’t matter if there more to the underlying music, but all too often the arrangements feel overly simplistic and dependent upon rhythm rather than harmony. Early single ‘Chateau’ is a telling exception, with just enough vocal variation and musical build to carry the listener along to its moody, bluesy climax. ‘Blind Ulysses’ also benefits from greater thought and depth, with its lingering guitar chords and breathy backing vocals generating far more atmosphere than the band’s standard fare.

For the most part though, this is an album that disappoints. Even so, The Brute Chorus deserve applause for trying a bold take on an old genre and in the process, showing more originality than many other of their contemporaries. Sadly though, in this case, aspiration isn’t enough.