Catching Up w/ Art Brut

I caught Art Brut open for The Hold Steady waaaaay back in November and have been meaning to mention them for a few months now. Before that night I had purposefully avoided the band for a pretty stupid reason - I didn’t like their name (I imagined them being painfully pretentious). I still don’t like the name, but that night I saw the err of my ways. They rocked without a shred of pretense, tearing through song after song about the simplest of rock and roll ideas with nothing but unbridled enthusiasm and a clear love for what they do leading the way.

I’ve since picked up both their 2005 debut, Bang Bang Rock n’ Roll - a loud, brash, and hysterically self-centered batch of punk and pub rock neo-classics, and their 2007 follow-up, It‘s A Bit Complicated, which is more of the same, if slightly less notable. “My Little Brother” was particularly memorable that night because I had brought my own little brother to see the show - he’s not a music guy in the least. Even if the band claims to be ‘irony-free’, the line “my little brother just discovered rock and roll” was full of it to me. Then he wound up liking The Hold Steady much better than Art Brut. Oh, the irony, again.

MP3 :: Emily Kane
MP3 :: My Little Brother
(from Bang Bang Rock n’ Roll. Buy here)

MP3 :: Pump Up The Volume
MP3 :: Post Soothing Out
(from It’s A Bit Complicated. Buy here)
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