Often, good music seeps from the most unlikely places. BREATHE are a case in point: they hail from Aylmerton (or, at least their record company does) which required your reviewer to make for his Ordnance Survey map. For the uninitiated, it's near Cromer in Norfolk. Not rock'n'roll enough for ya? Well, not necessarily, bearing in mind it's a stone's throw from West Runton, scene of virtually every important gig to pass through the area in the '70s and '80s and Cromer itself hosted one of the Sex Pistols last UK gigs. So there.
And Breathe themselves have clearly buffed up their rock'n'roll credentials with "Songs To Live And Die For". An album with intent as serious as its' title, and chock full of polished, well-played songs with a commercial, adult sheen, yet one that veers (mostly) away from that dreaded term 'AOR.'
Breathe are basically a duopoly of singer/ guitarist/ string arranger Jeremiah Williamson and guitarist/ multi-instrumentalist Jon Marrett, though they employ a regular rhythm section for most of the 12 tracks here. I say 12, although "Cold" is reprised in live, acoustic form, but all are co-written by Williamson and Marrett, who seem to have both the necessary songwriting skills as well as the chiselled good looks required to make a go of this notoriously slippery business.
"Songs To Live And Die For" begins promisingly with a great trio of songs. "Empty Vessel" opens with a surprising lightness of touch and pretty Spanish guitar pricking the looming atmosphere. Williamson weighs in with a fine, self-lacerating vocal and the songs explodes at the chorus with some quiet/loud dynamics Kurt Cobain would have been proud of. Expansive calling-card anthem "Breathe" then follows confidently in the splistream, again heating up the chorus in exactly the right place and "Hidden" ensures the Coldplay base is covered with rippling piano and sombre strings to the fore. The doomy toll of bells is also a genius touch.
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So far, so impressive, then, though the album then falters a little. "Get Out" has more delicate Spanish-style guitar filigree and foreboding strings, but is a little too tricksy for my liking and "Cold" - in its' studio form - tries too hard for its' own good and despite the requisite loops and mellotron colouring, is little more than a dirge.
The rest of the album is also a series of peaks and troughs. Certainly you can never knock Breathe's ambition and in a song like "Love Me", the huge piano soundscape and Williamson's massive vocals are undoubtedly showstopping, while "Attitude" undeniably has a haunting pop quality and the swooping cellos and slowburning quality of "Rain Has Come" scores effortlessly.
I'd be a little less enamoured of both the straight-ahead "Rapture", while the live, acoustic version of "Cold" for me fares little better than the studio cut, but Breathe sensibly close with two great tracks in "Free" - which builds from an expectant acoustic premise via Williamson's presence-fuelled drawl to a full-on rawk blowout that might be big but is surprisingly clever - and the closing "Troubled Mind" where the huge piano ballad sounds desolate like never before and is a real vocal tour de force for Williamson.
"Songs To Live And Die For" is slightly too inconsistent for this writer to wholeheartedly go into raptures, but it's surely an impressive album and one that srongly persuades you Breathe have plenty of distance left to run as yet. I feel they'll do better, but for now inhaling their rarefied air is a good idea.
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