Send "Viva Brother " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Guardian |
 On the cover of their debut album, the members of Viva Brother stare out from photographs hung in a barbershop window. A cynical voice might suggest that's fitting, given that photographs hung in barbershop windows are usually about 20 years out of date. Viva Brother, after all, proudly cleave to the 1990s for inspiration. The occasionally angular guitar riffs and falsetto vocals are borrowed from Blur, while the attitude and vocal mannerisms come via Oasis. The words sometimes aim for the observational vignettes of the former, but invariably end up causing you to beg their pardon in the manner of prime-time Noel: "It takes a moron to know one and he knows me," sings Lee Newell, a man who's either boldly written a song suggesting he's a moron or hasn't checked the exact meaning of his lyrics.Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Viva Brother Famous First Words Geffen 2011 Cynical voices are not hard to find where Viva Brother are concerned. Six months ago, they were Brother, signed for a rumoured quarter of a million, given to telling interviewers they were the saviours of rock'n'roll and authors of "the best songs of the last 20 years". Almost immediately, things started to go wrong. It emerged Brother had previously been an emo band called first Kill the Arcade, then Wolf Am I. Their songs were called things such as Arabella, You're a Lost Soul, their lyrics suggested Lee Newell was himself a tormented soul: "You brought me into this selfish so-called 'life'," opened Kill the Arcade's Navigators Start Navigating: shut up MUM, I didn't ASK to be BORN. Perhaps his anguish has been alleviated by writing the best songs of the last 20 years....full text |
| Musicomh |
| Let's not delude ourselves - this band didn't want to called Viva Brother. They only tacked on the "Viva" because they had to, and because they were out celebrating the successful completion of a friend's PhD when the decision had to be made*. They're the people who started out being called Brother. Which is what you saw on Manchester City shirts when Oasis - a band founded on fraternal collusion and collision - were at their height. What possessed them to signpost their influences so clearly? On the evidence of their debut album, the answer might just be that to adopt any other pretence would be simply ridiculous. Like grief, listening to this album comes in stages. The first is horror - that an album made so entirely of Britpop cliches should have been foisted upon the public. High Street Low Lives is a second-rate Country House; a poor man's Blur single. The guitar figure of Fly By Nights is full on Graham Coxon too, though that is preferable to the Dodgy odour that blights Still Here. Meanwhile, Lee Newell can't let a "time" go by without Liaming a good two or three extra syllables into it....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Viva Brother are the latest UK hype band to emerge seemingly from nowhere, this time making self-proclaimed "Grit Pop." The term is an obvious nod to Britpop but also to their hometown of Slough (which, by the way, still isn't half as gritty as Pulp's early 1990s Sheffield). A large part of how they have made it this far has to do with their loudmouth posturing in the British indie press and in public starting their second ever gig with the line "If anyone here doesn’t want to see the future of music, leave now." That kind of sassy talk has polarized the UK press but at least puts them leagues ahead of countless other faceless major label bands in the personality game. However, all that bluster and boasting comes undone when listening to Famous First Words and you realise they actually don't have anything to say at all. The songs range from a parade of clichés to the plain ridiculous, none more so than "I met the mermaid and I showed her just how to run," from "False Alarm", a song that also relays an imagined conversation with a tornado. Those kind of ideas come across as an unintentionally hilarious attempt to out-stupid Oasis at their most obtuse, but even the Gallaghers had enough sense to qualify their non-sequiturs with lines about getting high. Also, at least somebody in "Champagne Supernova" was having fun, because let's be clear-- nobody on this record is having fun, not you the listener nor any member of Viva Brother....full text |
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