The Chapman Family – Burn Your Town (From Daily Echo)

The Chapman Family – Burn Your Town

4:06pm Friday 18th March 2011 in Music Reviews

It’s been two years since this group’s successful stint on the NME Radar Tour thrust them in to the public eye, but that is how long it’s taken the group to write something they’re proud of.

For frontman Kingsley Chapman it wasn’t just about writing something that would have been alright on the back of that tour, but about creating an LP that every fan would look forward to picking up and playing.

And proud they should be. This is an LP mixing a host of styles in to one musical core of playability. You have the unashamedly pop ballad ‘Anxiety’ with its catchy chorus and chimed riffs. The sombre “And they say you’re best isn’t good enough” lyric repeating itself in to the recesses of your skull being offset against some viciously uplifting riffs.

But then you have some haunting post-Joy Division moody journeys such as the opener A Certain Degree or some eerily beautiful The Cure nods such as She Didn’t Know.

Produced by Richard Jackson (Future Of The Left) it is very bass and drum-orientated and with Phil Chapman’s bleedingly obvious talents with the sticks between his fingers this is a blessing of the highest degree.

It was designed to be listened to from start to finish and it will quite easily be so. There is no doubt that this sound can transfer easily to the live arenas and this writer for one cannot wait to find out for himself.

LEIGH SANDERS Rating: 5/5