BRAVERY - Stir The Blood

The honorable and glorious 2.3 (out of 10) that "Stir The Blood" was handed on the ever-incandescent pages of Pitchfork makes this album, through the obscure workings of a mechanism somewhat reminiscent of backroom politics, a fairly interesting object in itself, at least at first glance, as far as our ears are concerned. We remembered Sam Endicott's New York outfit Bravery (who in the meantime has taken to specializing in writing hit pop songs for other people, among them Shakira and Christina Aguilera) as a bunch of cold-blooded nocturnal reptiles squeezed into translucent black leather suits, devoted to an honest, darkness-tinged synth-pop revival, poised between early-Nineties U2 and the usual touchstones of New Order, Depeche Mode and Human Legue. And judging by the new material, that is essentially still what they are.

After a second album ("The Sun And The Moon", 2007) that perhaps never actually came out or, if it did come out, it's exactly as if it hadn't (and in any case, all things considered, it would have been better if it hadn't), Bravery find themselves thrust into a rather unpredictable world in which, overtaken just as effortlessly by Editors on the right and Franz Ferdinand on the left, they suddenly find themselves having to try to get a dancefloor excited that has since been left completely empty. The new songs (boasting production by John Hill, who has also worked with the likes of M.I.A and Santogold), to be generous and charitable, aren't even any worse than plenty of others (albeit virtually identical in structure and concept), but it's precisely this utterly transparent mediocrity that condemns them to a gentle prenatal death, preventing tracks like "Adored", "Sugarpill", "Slow Potion" or "I Am Your Skin" from even earning the ruinous distinction of being wholly negative (which would at least be a decent consolation prize). A track like "Hatefuck" (with its bombastic Linkin Park-style intro), to give just one example, doesn't even manage to hit rock bottom, as anonymous and insubstantial as the bland parade of self-referential prêt-à-porter it could easily provide the soundtrack for.

Bravery thus come across as a band that has lost its bearings — or rather, swallowed its own compass and choked on it with its bare hands. Indeed, what they most resemble, in the end, is a band that's already been dead for quite some time, and, listening closely, in an advanced state of ideal decomposition, to the point that "Stir The Blood" plays out like one long, failed round of CPR. Just four years ago they could lift the world with one finger; tomorrow, in all likelihood, they might be coming round to mow your lawn for five dollars a week. Sigh!

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23/12/2009