Brakes - The Well, Leeds – 12/11/09 [by Lawrence, Official Secrets Act]
4/5
By: Lawrence Diamond
There is a book, a heartbreaking, romantic, truly sad book, by Rob Sheffield called Love Is A Mixtape. It tells the story of a young music journalist in Middle America who falls in love with a crazy girl from the deep South. They struggle to pay bills, they go to see rock and roll shows, they travel from town to town, they go and see more rock and roll shows and then they marry young. Then she dies. And the young music journalist is left berift, alone and a widower at stupidly young age. It’s even more sad because it’s all completely true.
In the book Rob and his wife Renee fall in love with each other while discovering the joys of Pavement. They go and see them every opportunity they can, listening to their tapes on the drives to the shows and deciding which member they are most in love with. If Rob and Renee had cards listing the people they were allowed to leave their partners for without recrimination numbers 1-5 would be Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich, Scott Kannberg, Stever West and Mark Ibold. (Gary Young and Jason Fawkes would be at the bottom of the list in brackets, much as they are here.)
After Renee dies Rob wonders how he’ll ever move on. He listens through all the old mixtapes he made for Renee, or that Renee made for him. He moves town again. He talks to the dog that Renee insisted they get, even though they couldn’t even afford their own rent and then, eventually, he writes his book.
In the footnotes he runs through the people he would like to thank for helping him through the whole process and mentions a new girl that he’s found. A girl who goes to watch Hold Steady shows with him and helps him feel a little bit like he felt when he went to watch Pavement with Renee back in those innocent days in the early and mid 90s.
Britain doesn’t really do bands like Pavement and The Hold Steady. Bands that release loads of great records that mean loads and loads to a relatively small amount of people. Bands that play what seems like 1000 shows a year. Bands who couldn’t give a damn about what anyone thinks about them, but in their hearts secretly want everyone to love them, or at least to be loved by everyone who it’s worth being loved by. Maybe there aren’t enough people like that in Britain to support these kind of bands, perhaps we have loads and I’m being a damn cynic. Either way Brakes are definitely one of those bands. And tonight in Leeds they show just what a wonderful thing they are.
If I was ever to fall in love with a girl from the deep south, buy a big dog I couldn’t afford and run from town to town in a bid to try and keep a roof above all our heads Brakes are the band I would play in the car on the drives. If I ever decided to put on shows in our local Laundromat Brakes are the band I would ask to play every week for eternity. And if I ever lost someone that I thought would be with me for the rest of my life, I would listen to the version of ‘Isabel’ they played on this wet and windy night in Leeds and think that possibly, one day the rain might stop, the sun would come out and all might be well in the world again.
Artists in this article: Brakes
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