Stir the Blood is The Bravery's latest studio album, released on December 8th. My dad got it for me as a Christmas present, because he saw the band perform on television and liked the guitar player's use of a violin bow. He keeps bugging me to let him borrow it. I think maybe he should have just bought the album for himself. I don't have much to say about it. It was a relatively short album, not even fifty minutes long. Most songs were standard 3-4 minute pop songs. The Bravery are from the same collective of New Wave, synth-rock/post-punk renaissance bands as The Killers and Franz Ferdinand, and honestly, the music was better the first time around.
It seems like The Bravery are trying to sound like The Killers (who in turn try to sound like The Cure or Depeche Mode but don't quite manage it), only edgier, with a lot more "fuck"s and references to kinky sex. Come to think of it, now that I take these facts into account, The Bravery want to sound like Depeche Mode, too.
At any rate, the album is pretty mediocre. The songs are catchy, but lack depth and are nothing that hasn't been heard before. One track, "She's So Bendable," reminds me of Psychocandy-era Jesus And Mary Chain. Another song, called "The Spectator," brings to mind The Sisters of Mercy. That is as far as the album deviates from the New Wave/dance sound, which, as I've already established, has been done into the ground. I really dislike new bands that try hard to sound like old bands, whether it's in tribute to those older acts, or just the fact that current bands are just not original. If you are reading this and you are thinking about starting a New Order clone-band, please reconsider. You will only look bad, not just because of your unoriginality, but also because the band whose sounds you are trying to replicate undoubtedly did it better.
Standout tracks: The remix of Slow Poison that Kevin Barnes (Of Montreal) did, which is included as a bonus track.
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