If Liam Gallagher and Damon Albarn made sweet, passionate, unprotected man love – (steady on! Ed) – and chose to keep the baby (they can decide between themselves who wants to give birth) it would probably look a little like Viva Brother.
They have been billed as ‘Gritpop’ and heralded as the latest saviours of British guitar rock. To be fair, there’s far more pop than grit here, especially during the record’s first half. But they never get quite down and dirty enough for the ‘gritty’ appellation to apply.
A fairer description for the four-piece from Slough would be that they’re more like the full-blooded lurve child of ‘90s Britpop… and ‘90s Britpop. Over the 10 tracks, they don’t cover any ground that hasn’t already been trampled by Oasis, Blur, Stone Roses or more recently, Kaiser Chiefs.
But what they do, they do very well. From the “aah’s” and “ooh’s” of the intro to opening track ‘New Year’s Day’ to the bluesy riff of closing track ‘Time Machine’, it is clear that they have attitude in abundance. Frontman Lee Newell channels a bit of Liam Gallagher in his vocals, although he verges into (you’ve guessed it) Damon Albarn territory at times.
It’s a solid effort from Viva Brother and it will be interesting to see where they take their sound into their terrible twos. But if they get the chance to undergo a Jeremy Kyle-style DNA test, they’ll probably find that a certain member of Blur is the biological daddy.