What Cheer? Brigade, We Blow You Suck

What Cheer? Brigade is a 19-piece brass band that borrows from Bollywood, balkan, New Orleans, and samba, and rev everything up to the level of punk rock, in a similar way to Mucca Pazza or other marching bands.  The tunes on their debut, We Blow You Suck, are ragged and rocking, with interesting arrangements and catchy melodies.  They’re clearly having a lot of fun, and it comes through in the recording.

They have a lot of beautiful tunes.  “Malequena” sounds like an old traditional Gypsy song, with a contemporary stop-time arrangement and wild dual trumpet and saxophone solos. “Saiyan Re Saiyan” sounds like a samba, though, with a loud, heavy rock beat underneath, a wild melody, and a cool chromatic bridge.  The songs are almost entirely instrumental, with the exception of a couple of tunes like “13 Monsters,” which starts out with chanting the title and switches quickly between free-jazz madness and a driving, anthemic melody.  And none of the arrangements are overly complex or showy — they just underline the melodic quality of the songs.

The What Cheer? Brigade guys (and girls) are a lot of fun.  And they rock as hard as any regular rock band; heck, probably more.  And they have an endless number of wonderful melodies.  It all makes for quite a debut album.   Too bad more kids don’t play horns, ’cause that would mean every rebellious teenager would start a band like this, rather than a hardcore band or something.  Which would be awesome.

Feature photo by RK Chin.