Labels: Count Your Lucky Stars
Review by: Andy Malcolm
Do you remember indiemo in 2001? When you couldn’t move for bands that sounded like Jimmy Eat World, Knapsack and Texas is the Reason? When a bunch of these bands were on Deep Elm and the others were all on tiny local labels and you could buy their CDs for a fiver from Subjugation? Kid Brother Collective is exactly like that. All super wrought vocals and big rocking melodies, most of the songs last longer than four minutes which they spend emoting first softly, then loudly, packing in driving riffs and a whole lot of energy. Now, Kid Brother Collective was never a band that really caught my attention, and listening back I can kind of see why, as this is fairly middle of the road. It sounds like so many other bands from that period without standing out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a pretty good album but it hasn’t quite got the song-writing to stand out. Plus the vocals are in a style that I never really got on with, it’s rather over-sung and a little grating. Highway Miles originally came out in 2003, and bands of this ilk had pretty much become extinct by that point, remembering that just a couple of years prior we were mired in an era of copycat bands – a situation somewhat similar to what we have lately with so many bands wanting to sound like Empire! Empire! or Algernon Cadwallader.
Highway Miles is a perfectly a solid album, and a worthy nostalgia trip, but I suspect this is mostly of value to those who miss this band and want to own it in this rather lovely packaging and vinyl combo that CYLS have put together, it’s a fine looking record. Whilst it may find an audience of new listeners unburdened by the past, to me it is a document of a long dormant era, and this record only really warrants a footnote as the embers of that period’s emotional independent rock music were glowing their last, rather than a full blown eulogy.