The Chapman Family - Burn Your Town

Born out of apparent frustration at “bands from Newcastle singing in a cockney accent, trying to be The Libertines”, The Chapman Family formed in 2006 with the ethos of being the antithesis to the fashionable Indie bands of that time. Burn Your Town is the debut album from The Family and it claims to stand as a brainy, dark, and punk counter to Indie values. That’s a big claim from a band that played a well-received stint on the NME Radar Tour so let’s see if their claims are justified.

As it is with any group claiming to be a major departure from what came before, the apples tend not to fall very far from the tree and that’s the case here. For one the cockney accents might not be front and centre on the album, but they do feature, particularly when singer Kinglsey hits the higher register on choruses, the track Anxiety being a prime example. Indeed I found that The Chapman Family often come across as a heavier, punkier version of Maxїmo Park, right down to the guitar tones. That said, their style can’t help but work in their favour however as the people that may be drawn in by their ethos will stay for the familiarity.

There are moments here when The Chapman Family separate themselves quite a bit from the Indie-kids, in particular on the track 1000 Lies. Here the band echo sentiments that are profoundly dark, bringing to mind QOTSA and Joy Division. It’s an anthemic track and probably one of the most evocative songs on the album. Amidst industrial, distorted samples, and tom rolls, band ringleader Kingsley Chapman sings “It takes a million to hold, it takes a million to beat you”, and the darkness the band claim to is finally realised.

As we progress into the album’s second half, the darkness remains. She Didn’t Know comes as another epic track, although its apparent depth is marred by the lyrics which, when you look into them, are more whiney than hardcore. That only a side-note however, as the track crashing along quite happily, love song lyrics or no. Adding further to the darker tones, the track Kids starts out as the most raw, heavy sounding song on the album. But after half a minute, the song shifts into a pseudo-punk pop song. Kingsley chants “the kids are not alright, the kids are not okay”, and sings of Hollywood bungalows in the most Maxїmo Park-esque track on the album.

For me, the anti-Indie ethos falls down at even the most cursory glance at the album and an “alternative version of Pet Sounds” it most definitely is not. To me it’s much more of a darker sounding Indie album rather than a breakout punk-metal album in a sea of bland guitar bands. It must be said though, I would not normally put so much effort in trying to equate what the band say they are and what they actually are. It’s just that The Chapman Family are telling you what to think they are before you even listen to them. It’s not that this isn’t a strong album; it’s just that the band need to focus more on who they are than who they are trying not to be.

Drop-d Rating: 6/10

Published on Drop-D.ie, May 4th, 2011