Album Review

The Chapman Family – Burn Your Town

• 15th Feb 2011

When a band builds an excellent reputation as live performers, their recorded offerings can sometimes feel like a disappointment in comparison.

But that is most definitely not the case with this fine debut from the North East’s post-punk favourites, The Chapman Family. The album bristles with the energy that marks the band’s live performances and demonstrates a confidence in their ability to make good music that is both entertaining and provocative.

The album opens with A Certain Degree, a darkly atmospheric masterpiece with great harmonies. This uncharacteristically slower number featuring a glockenspiel and haunting vocals feels like the calm before the storm.

And the pace does pick up immediately with the impatient feedback heavy guitar of All Fall. The current single Anxiety is up next, its rhythmic hook and big chorus making it if not quite a pop song, then an indie anthem that should sell well.

Sound Of The Radio is another big song. It builds sonically from a quiet start with pounding drums and high pitched guitars before the vocal takes over with manic intensity. This one could be a single too.

1000 Lies takes us to a darker place, a fast paced drum beat backing the singer with distorted guitar sounds fading in and out. She Doesn’t Know starts slowly, the strong and steady vocal telling the story before the distorted guitars take over. It rises and falls over and over before it fades into Something I Can’t Get Out, which has a raw energy that hints at a nihilistic vision.

The production is superb throughout the whole album. All of the instruments can be heard; no mean feat with such a large sound and the vocals are always clear in the mix. It is not easy to capture the feel of a live performance on record, but producer Richard Jackson has certainly pulled off the trick.

A reworked version of the early single Kids has been a highlight of recent stage shows, and the album version features the same speeded up aggression that gives it a whole new life. The screamed vocals and furious guitars are a throwback to that old punk intensity of days gone by.

If that wasn’t enough of an assault on the senses, Million Dollars takes things to a whole new level. Dark doesn’t begin to describe a song about murdering children during the second world war. The middle section of the song threatens to cause sonic overload with its cacophony of pounding drums, screaming guitars, wailing synths and anguished vocals.

The one track on the album that I don’t really get is the closing Virgins. Million Dollars is almost impossible to follow and frankly I wouldn’t have tried.

Virgins slows the pace with its sparse opening arrangement before the guitars kick in once more. Then it stops at four minutes in and three minutes of silence follows. A strange electronic drone takes over an then the song is reprised. It’s not that it is a bad track; for me it just doesn’t work as a closer.

But it is perhaps churlish to find fault with what is an excellent debut album. It has the drive and intensity that characterises The Chapman Family’s music and deserves a wide audience.

Back in 2009 the NME labelled The Chapman Family as a band to watch. With this album they are now realising that potential in a big way.