However, that’s The Brute Chorus for you; contrary souls playing the contemporary blues. They aren’t the victim of record company meddling either, as that as-yet untitled record is set to emerge on their own (as-yet unnamed) label later in the year. It’s really a rare case of the London-based quartet following traditional industry rules, regarding release dates and the like – usually they plough their own sweet furrow. The recording of the album, for example, took place at Camden’s Roundhouse venue in February, live, in front of an audience. A nice idea but a bloody stressful evening.
“At the time it was completely allconsuming,” admits frontman James Steel. “The four of us were in the attic of this pub rehearsing every day, we decided on the set after the first week and just drilled that, but when it came to the actual day, for the first time in ages I actually had stage-fright. Although the gig went really well it wasn’t until we started hearing the mixes back weeks later that we realised. ‘oh, we’ve done it.’”
One single has emerged from the session thus far, ‘All The Pilgrims’, a bluesy barroom brawler that sums up their sound pretty well. “We really like all that tribal Bo Diddley, jungly, swampy stuff,” says the hirsute singer, “but essentially we’re trying to make people dance, without making dance tunes.”
Then again, they may well have changed direction by the time the album drops. Work has already begun on the follow-up, and the chaps are banging away at new material in another sweaty rehearsal room when Clash interrupts. Chief songwriter Steel is the charismatic creative force, but it’s clearly more democracy than dictatorship, as band discussions can get pretty fierce.
“We’ve lived together and toured together for a couple of years now and it’s no-holds-barred when it comes to arguing,” he says. “We argue because we’re passionate about what we do, but it’s also like that thing you get with your brother – you can be as vicious as you like but the next day you’re still brothers.”
The Brute Chorus gigs are famously full-on, so doing the album live seemed a perfectly sensible method “rather than a stunt”, although they’d originally planned to release it a few weeks later. The live feel will remain intact, though. “One of the songs, I fluffed the whole thing but we decided to leave it on,” admits Steel. “We wanted to make it as perfect as possible but didn’t want to chicken out of showing the glaring mistakes.”
A lot of bands would make a lot more records if they took The Brute Chorus course.
Words by Si Hawkins
