The Bravery (above) has a sound that echoes the New Wave, dance pop, and Gothic slam style of '80s British bands like the Cure.
(GERED MANKOWITZ/BOWSTIR LTD)
Music review
Would the Bravery exist without the Cure? Or, more specifically, would Bravery singer Sam Endicott exist without Cure frontman Robert Smith? It might be a bit unfair to single out this New York quintet when several other acts in recent years (Hot Hot Heat and the Rapture come to mind) have also mined the '80s British band's idiosyncratic blend of New Wave, dance-pop, and Goth-glam melodrama.
Trouble is, a couple of decades on, the approach isn't so idiosyncratic anymore. It has become a sonic template nearly as predictable as the soft-loud grunge dynamics that every other American rock band claimed as its own in the wake of Nirvana. All of which mattered not a whit to the audience that packed the Paradise Monday for the first night of the Bravery's two sold-out shows.
The band's fans have claimed the Bravery as a soundtrack to their own lives - a position and place best articulated by Endicott when he forlornly yelped the lines from the band's latest anthem to ennui, "Time Won't Let Me Go": "Whenever I look back on the best days of my life/ I think I saw them on TV . . . I never had a summer of '69."
That song, which proved a highlight of the Bravery's mostly sharp 60-minute set, carried all the best elements of the band's intentions: a squiggly synth line; bright guitar riff and sturdy melody; and an earnest lyric poised to connect and delivered with perfectly pained disaffection.
"The Ocean," an elegant, keyboard-and-guitar-encrusted ballad that echoed the silvery majesty of the Church, was another high point from the band's latest album, "The Sun and the Moon," as was "Tyrant," a slab of the slinky dance-floor funk from its 2005 debut.
"This Is Not the End," which nicked its clanging opening riff from the Clash's indelible "London Calling" before receding into a bland mid-tempo wash of its own, worked less well and pointed up the band's shortcomings. Imitation may indeed be the highest form of flattery, but it can also make woefully clear the limitations of the imitator's own original work.
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