The Beat Surrender

If you are looking for a shiny new band of fresh faced teenagers who are going to invent a whole new genre and turn music on its head then ist probably aren’t the band for you. If however, you are in the market for some brilliantly realised melodic rock with songwriting as fresh as you could hope to hear then ist should be your next port of call for definite.

Built initially around the talented Canadian Kenton Hall who won over Pink Box Records boss Chris Garland with an impromptu acoustic run through of one song in his office, they are very much a group though and have just releaed Toothpick Bridge their third album, with Hall joined by Mark ‘Flash’ Haynes, John McCourt and Brett Richardson after a couple of line up changes to get to this point, due to tragic cicumstances in one case and career choice in another.

The album has a real rich tapestry of influences and styles throughout it, it doesn’t rest on it’s laurels and get flush with the success of having given you a great track, instead they push and strive to better that on the next one, meaning despite the different sounds involved it’s a consistent and perfectly sequenced album.

As always I like to try and draw your attention to some highlights to get a feel of the album and that’s easier said than done with so many to choose from on here. The brass driven single Pep Talk is an obvious choice, as I suppose would be the power pop feel of The Boy’s Not Right and Rebecca, you don’t want obvious though do you?

In which case i’d go for the emotional and powerful Would You Buy A Bible From This Man?, the piano ballad of Demand or the brilliant lyrics and scathing look at celebrity couples and scandals in Company Of Sense with the lyrics “when you think with your dick, she thinks with her purse”...as good as these are though my two favourites come right near the end of the album.

You Should Be Ashamed is alt country in style and wonderful throughout, some might find it a bit m.o.r. but some can piss off, it’s great and could well prove a big hit in America if it got picked up. The other track is an instrumental, surprising when the lyrics and vocals are so key to the band, but the horns and trombones combine to give a funky feel to Yer Man’s A Bingo Caller.

A top album that is going to give you more each time you listen to it, don’t just take my word for it though, why not find out for yourselves?