Bridge and Tunnel are another band who I've been introduced to because they have some connection to Latterman (and therefore the other related bands) and Rebuilding Year is their second album. I saw them play in the Windmill in Brixton with Above Them a year or so ago and thought they were pretty good. I kinda expected them to be, so it was nice to be proved correct. I think they'd played Kingston the week before, but for some reason I couldn't make it. Sarah had gone to the Kingston one and, since she's the only friend in London who might enjoy Bridge and Tunnel, I had to go to the Brixton show on my own. I don't mind going to shows on my own so much, but I feel way more conscious of it when it's a smaller crowd. Still, I knew a few people to say hello to, so it wasn't all bad.
Anyway, at the end of the show I wanted to pick up a Bridge and Tunnel LP, and opted for their second one because they'd played the first song and I quite liked it (it turned out to be one of favourites on the album). It's a nice gatefold and the No Idea website tells me that this is the second press (/250). Musically, it's great. It reminds me a lot of Small Brown Bike with a hint of Baroness (especially on Synchronised Swimming), but the dual male/female vocals add loads to it and the occasional smooth, gentle singing (like in the middle of Hands) works brilliantly.
Like Latterman, the lyrics mostly have a point to make, and lyrics to Footnotes, which is that academic research is often kept away from the real world, particularly caught my ear. Just yesterday I was having a conversation with a new colleague about that very subject - she studied chemistry where there was no way of getting research for free, and made the relative ease at which I found maths papers seem even more generous. But then, given that chemistry is considerably more useful than maths, shouldn't they be easier to access? I get that it costs money to run a journal (and even more to fund research), but it seems wrong that now we're in the "information age" some of that information is so hard to get at. All three of my papers are on the internet so that anyone who wants to read them can; it's partly because if anyone actually wants to read my work, I really want them to be able to (those papers will be read even less than this blog!), but mostly because I agree that research should be freely available.
So that was quite off-topic. Sorry. Nice record though, certainly worth checking out.
Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £8 new
Bought: gig
When: 22/05/12
Colour: Transparent red
Etching: Side A: "Rebearding year" Side B: "Elevator pals forever"
mp3s: Download code
