First single "Time Won't Let Me Go" candy-coats Endicott's slit-wrist pathos, wrapping sunny organs and Coldplay-style reverb riffs around the frontman as he bitches about how dreary life was before he became a fabulous rock star: "I never had a summer of '69/ Never had a Cherry Valance of my own/ All these precious moments you promised me would come in time."Īs annoying as Endicott's mascara-tainted bellyaching was on the Bravery's debut, his histrionics-for-the-masses commandeer the group's stylistic direction on The Sun and the Moon, cheapening already trite regurgitations of Robert Smith confessionals by bloating them to anthemic proportions. Modern rock fixture Brendan O'Brien mans the boards here, spackling the band's sound with as much fluff and plastic as his early 90s records had grunge and feedback. However, seeking to now eschew their blatant touchstones, the band strips down to a more guitar-based mush not beholden to any one or two specific influences, but remains shockingly unoriginal nonetheless. Despite its shameless Cure copping, "An Honest Mistake" left open the possibility of the band becoming a jaded, Americanized Franz Ferdinand, while "Fearless" and "No Brakes" flashed subtler, smarter synth and basslines than nearly anything on Hot Fuss. To understand what a failure of a record this is, you have to consider the few redeeming qualities of the band's self-titled debut. Unsurprisingly, the band now appears at a loss for a next move on their follow-up, The Sun and the Moon, jilted by a dance-rock scene that's grown less and less forgiving with every soulless, four-on-the-floor wannabe anthem. No matter how many prefabricated altercations Flowers and Bravery frontman Sam Endicott want to engage in, the latter can't deny his debt to the former: The Bravery's self-titled debut flourished in the new-wave niche carved out by the Killers. risked alienating their fanbase by swapping 80s icons on Sam's Town, replacing airy Duran Duran electro-pop with stone-washed Bruce Springsteen ethos. Although Hot Fuss served as the nefarious stem cell to the seemingly hundreds of new wave/post-punk revivalist clones- the Bravery included- Brandon Flowers & co.
Then there's the Killers, the synth-rock monoliths inexorably linked to Brooklyn parasites the Bravery.