Staff Reviews

The Chapman Family - Burn Your Town

Review by Robert Leedham

What ultimately drags down Burn Your Town though, is the nagging surprise that it took The Chapman Family so long to put out this record.»

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cd digipack. 'burn your town' is the debut album from the chapman family. the band worked with future of the left producer richard jackson on the album. frontman kingsley chapman said: "we wanted to make a slightly nostalgic album like those bands we used loved when we first started did - marilyn manson, nine inch nails, the strokes." a single, flowing piece from start to finish, 'burn your town' finds the group broadening their horizons and doing it brilliantly. they've tried to do an album in cinemascope, and it's paid off. the byword is intensity. you do not open a record with a song as nerve-wracking as 'a certain degree' without venturing further down that road, and it has counterparts (in mood, if nothing else) in '1000 lies' and the jaw-dropping penultimate track 'million dollars', whose relentless drums and blistering finale crafted from pure noise linger in the mind long after the song ends. on the other side of the coin, however, the immediacy of 'anxiety' and 'sound of the radio' shows that the band know what they're doing when it comes to writing 'big' songs. big songs that deserve stellar production, and with future of the left producer richard jackson handling those duties, an excellent job has been done.
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