JEFF the Brotherhood: Hypnotic Nights (Warners)

 |   |  <1 min read

JEFF the Brotherhood: Country Life
JEFF the Brotherhood: Hypnotic Nights (Warners)

Perhaps this Nashville duo should call themselves “Jeff the Bruvverhood” as their debts to the Ramones (dense and fuzzy pop, aural references to Sixties girl groups etc) are splattered across many of these 11 songs co-produced by the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach who has brought out a marginally more pop element from them.

So reference points might now include garageband Beach Boys, Weezer, a more constrained but slightly-delic Dinosaur Jr and even the Meat Puppets if they'd adopted teen pop instead of country as a touchstone.

All of which means JEFF frequently sound little more than a sum of influences and it's hard to share the enthusiasm which American reviewers have greeted this often unadventurous outing.

Must be their anointment by Auerbach, because enjoyably thrashy though songs like the flat-tack Wood Ox and Staring at the Wall might be, there's not a lot of depth or originality on display.

And Leave Me Out sounds like it might have been found in a Nirvana outtakes box.

Not entirely borrowed clothes (Region of Fire with sitar-guitar is kind of cool in a late 1968 way) although it ends with an unusual, wonky synth-supported cover of Sabbath's Changes.

Like the sound of this? Then check out this.

Share It

Your Comments

post a comment

More from this section   Music at Elsewhere articles index

Howe Gelb and Lonna Kelly: Further Standards (Fire)

Howe Gelb and Lonna Kelly: Further Standards (Fire)

The always interesting Howe Gelb does exactly what he wants and in recent years that has seen the man behind desert psych-rockers Giant Sand work with Spanish musicians, write albums of piano... > Read more

Ben Waters: Boogie 4 Stu (Eagle/Shock)

Ben Waters: Boogie 4 Stu (Eagle/Shock)

If nothing else -- and there is more "else" -- this album should attract attention for the version here of the Bob Dylan-penned track Watching the River Flow which features, for the first... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

AN EMERALD CITY INTERVIEWED (2009): The sky-high vision

AN EMERALD CITY INTERVIEWED (2009): The sky-high vision

To hear guitarist/keyboard player Sam Handley tell it, there was a magical moment when they knew: “That first hit on the drum, it just sounded 10 times bigger than normal”. In... > Read more

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . “THE VELVET UNDERGROUND – ETC”: Candy says, yeah but nah . . .

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . “THE VELVET UNDERGROUND – ETC”: Candy says, yeah but nah . . .

There are plenty of albums of very dodgy provenance (live and studio bootlegs, outtakes never intended to see the light and so on) but few misrepresent themselves quite as much as this one which,... > Read more