The Broken Family Band - Hello Love Album Review

Broken Family Band
Hello Love
Album Review

You wouldn't know it from watching the BBC's coverage, but Cambridge-based the Broken Family Band were one of the best sets of the whole weekend. Hello Love is the band's fourth album, and it is the one in which they step further away from their alt-country aping, and into something more akin to country-tinged Pixies or Shins.

Front man Steven Adams is a genuinely witty and engaging front man, and the album works through a few gears to achieve a great mix. In fact, if this weren't the same band, references to country would be irrelevant. One might refer to Pavement or the Violent Femmes instead, in the best of ways (the humour, the edge). There is an honesty to the observation in the lyrics that is refreshing; it is also nice to hear a British band eschew the spiky guitar pop punk thing that has become so fashionable, just to play great rock music. The crowd at Glastonbury that knew their local music weren't watching the Top 40 bands on the main stages - they were watching a band that deserves a whole lot more blow away a folk stage and a country tag.

3.5/5

Mike Rea