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Tom Lumley and The Brave Liaison - 'Everything's Affected' Album Review


Tom Lumley and The Brave Liaison - 'Everything's Affected' Album Review


Following a sell out album launch show at The Grace in London on Thursday, Cambridgeshire band Tom Lumley and The Brave Liaison (Jake Day, Billy Stewart and Jonny Thompson) released their debut album 'Everything's Affected' on 22nd October.  It has 12 tracks, including the previously released singles 'Crawling', 'Fake Friends' and 'Haunted'.  The album represents the bands work over the past 4 years and perhaps more importantly it is packed full of bloody brilliant tracks! The band have been described as hard-working and they obviously are, I know this from watching their social media and the effort they put into their posts, their promotion of their singles, their gigs - this is a band that are invested in what they do and who make their music with passion - and you can hear that in this album. 

This is an album of predominantly high energy rock songs, with some reflective moments, ranging in subject from the end of a relationship, being unable to resist returning to an ex and obviously the self explanatory nature of 'Fake Friends'. There are songs full of swagger, such as the opener 'Modern Age', 'Shrink', 'Better Than This' and 'Casual' (some of which I have seen performed live and they go hard in front of an audience believe me) and then those that are full of emotion, including 'Chemicals' and the beautifully awe inspiring 'Hands of Time' and 'Better Days'. What they all have in common is clever catchy melodies with amazingly intricate guitars, big drums, strong bass and faultlessly delivered lyrics.

If I was "tied up to your parents bed" and pushed to choose my favourites to listen to whilst I'm there then I'm going 'Crawling', 'Better Days' and 'Haunted'. Can I point out I humorously stole that line from their track 'Crawling' and this isn't just the strange way I select my musical preferences.

Tom Lumley and The Brave Liaison are well supported and respected locally by those in the music industry - fellow bands, venues and the local BBC Introducing team. They won an award in September local to East Anglia recognising their 'breakthrough' success, and the fact they have played some of the biggest festivals this year - including Isle of Wight, 110 Above, Tramlines and were booked to play the unfortunately postponed Truck - shows that this band are gaining momentum and moving towards an even bigger amount of success in their future. 

As an addition to this review, this album did amazingly well in the iTunes pre-order charts and a well deserved place in the album charts later this week is hopefully on the cards. The band would love it if you could back them and buy the album on iTunes for £4.99 or a physical copy of the CD/Vinyl from the link in their bio. Hopefully my opinion and the taster of some of the tracks on this post has convinced you that they could be your new favourite band! 




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