Photograph by Ian D. Hall

Originally published by L.S. Media. September 16th 2012.

L.S. Media Rating ****

If you are going to do a cover version of a song in your set as a young and up-coming band, make it a good one, preferably a hit record, and then stomp all over it in size ten shoes and take an eight pound mallet to it to tenderise and finally hold it up to the watching audience and say, “look this is how it should be done.” This is how Brothers ‘N’ Bandits treated the crowd at the o2 Academy to their version of Coldplay’s Yellow and it was magnificent to witness.

Brothers ‘N’ Bandits are Liam Tanner, Tom Dalrymple, Liam Bentley and Matthew Colfar and together they make a group of musicians that are fun on the ears and maddeningly excellent to watch. Not only do they sound superb but they have the poise and grandeur of a group that have been going ten times as long as they have been.

In some this could lead to the audience thinking that surely they can’t sustain this type of approach, not together as it invariably leads to fractious behaviour but Brothers ‘n’ Bandits seem to be made of sterner stuff than that and by readily owning the ability to take a nice but bland song as such as Yellow and turn it into something a lot more dynamic only bodes well for the young men. Add this too their own repertoire and collection of songs and you have a group to match any of the new generation of Liverpool bands. There must be something pretty potent in the Mersey waters these days.

Brothers ‘N’ Bandits opened up with This Won’t Last Forever and the crunching Sunday Afternoon, both of which were eye opening and stunning visually. Like Room for Rent who opened the evening, Brothers ‘N’ bandits soon had the audience cheering them on in spectacular fashion and it only goes to show what musicianship there is in Liverpool and how important it is to let it be heard, to give it a chance and let it flourish.

There is no doubting the talent that these four lads have and on one of the final songs of their set, Life and Soul, showed, they are genuinely good at what they do and how they approach the live music scene, namely with everything they have and with their heads clear.

One for the future.

Ian D. Hall