The Broken Family Band has announced it will be touring the UK in April and May to promote the release of its seventh album Please And Thank You, released on Monday 20th April. The band will also be performing a JD Set gig in Glasgow on Friday 6th March. Full dates as follows:
Popular on LondonNet
Fri 6th March: GLASGOW, ABC 2
Thu 23rd April: LEEDS, Brudenell Social Club
Fri 24th April: EDINBURGH, Cabaret Voltaire
Sat 25th April: NEWCASTLE, The Cluny
Sun 26th April: NOTTINGAM, Rescue Rooms
Thu 7th May: LONDON, Scala
Fri 8th May: MANCHESTER, Ruby Lounge
Sat 9th May: BRISTOL, Thekla (10pm curfew)
Sun 10th May: BRIGHTON, Hanbury Club
Sat 16th May: CAMBRIDGE, Junction
Mixed by veteran producer George Shilling, Please and Thank You is, according to singer and lyricist Steve Adams, an album loosely centred around the uncontroversial yet indeterminate idea of “being nice to people”. From its stomping opener Please Yourself, a sceptical look at hipsters (with ‘cocaine in your moustache’) offended by his cheap guitar with nods, lyrically and musically (and not accidentally) to Elvis Costello’s classic masturbation anthem Pump It Up, to its conclusion, a gentle ode to burying the hatchet, country-tinged Old Wounds (the only trace of their folksy origins), it covers a lot of ground.
The gentle Mimi is about a beautiful girl who worked in an ‘adult’ shop, according to its writer, while the drably titled St Albans, effectively a short story about a man who went to the wrong place to have sex with an Eastern European girl set to an ominous melody, started out as the more exotic St Petersburg, a title that was deemed to be “unrealistic”. Borrowed Time, with its anachronistic plea to “keep on choogling, even when we’re tired”, neatly captures the band’s split personality while Cinema Vs House, a witty dissection of the eternal dating seesaw, starts sweetly and ends up as a rock juggernaut. Eight years in, The Broken Family Band have gradually shed the accordionists, the cute girl singers, the banjo players, even the American drawl, and reduced themselves to the unchanged core of Adams, bassist Gavin Johnson, guitarist Jay Williams and drummer Micky Roman. And they’ve made their best album so far.
Please And Thank You will be preceded by a new single, Salivating, on Monday 6th April. Available as a 2 track CD single, and as a digital download, the single also features a previously unreleased version of Love Your Man, Love Your Woman (Soft Eyes Version).
