The Bravery Album: “Sun and the Moon [Best Buy Exclusive] [Bonus CD]”

The Bravery's first CD was incredible.

Unfortunately that means that subsequent releases will always be compared to the original album.

This CD while delivering some great tracks, for lack of a better word is not as "catchy." While there is not a total absence of "catchyness" (lol, not even a real word) there could be more of it. That's the limit of my disappointment. There are some great tracks as well as the expected strong lyrical backing. The album has a definite deeper feel than the previous release as well as some real upbeat tracks. It has lasting sound to it and you wont get tired of it too quickly.

I give it 3 Stars. Give it a listen, form your own opinion.

Gone is the synthy dance tunes on their 2005 album. Instead, what we have is so much better: less infectious and more melody-driven, less The Killers (which started a public feud between Endicott and Flowers in 2005) and more The Bravery. The tracks are less polished and more rock-infused. If anything, this disc solidifies The Bravery's Brit rock musicality and at least to me, that's a great thing. "The Sun and the Moon" is a departure from their debut but it is still a very enjoyable listen. In fact, I may enjoy this album a tiny bit more than their previous release.

Just pick up this album and you'll understand - the great intro (including the song "Believe" with its riffs) is one of the best lead-ins into an album I've ever heard.

Huge Bravery fan here since their debut. There were a couple songs - i.e. Bad Sun, Fistful of Sand, and Above and Below - with beautiful melodies that show a different side of the boys

And of course, the gorgeous ending - The Ocean - with powerful lyrics caps off a pretty solid sophmore project

"And I loose your hand through the waves......"

The second album by The Bravery is a radical departure from

, in a major improvement. Gone are the Duran Duran/Killers imitative songs and pseudo-new wave posturing, in are melodic songs with acoustic underpinnings. While a comparison to the radical shift The Killers made with

is more than a little apt, The Bravery sound more like they boned up on

,

,

or even a little

when they started laying the groundwork for "The Sun and The Moon."

The album is a low key affair, without the obvious single that marked "An Honest Mistake." But given time, "Time Won't Let Me Go" and "Believe" stay in your memory. There are a couple of darker moments, like "Tragedy Bound," about a woman so hard luck that "She's cutting herself just to see if it works." If you miss the breezy, easy pop of the debut, there's "Bad Sun," with an inescapable whistling hook.

They have not completely escaped their past, however. "Every Word is a Knife In My Ear" is on a par with "Stop Drop and Roll" from the debut as filler and "Split Me Wide Open" is way too heavy handed lyrically for its own good. Main Braveheart Sam Endicott can be proud of this effort, though. With "The Sun and The Moon," he and his fellow Bravery mates have transcended their roots and made an album that shows a band with more promise than their debut would have led you to contemplate.

With The Bravery's debut album being a very admirable part of the regrettably brief new wave resurgence movement in music alongside such similar artists as The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, and Editors, I hoped that their second release would sound fairly similar to their self-titled release, which is one of my all-time favorite albums. I'm all for bands going in new directions, but unfortunately The Bravery seems to have moved in a direction that is more or less a bland alternative style, and comes short of the appeal of their prior upbeat 80's-ish style. Only two or three tracks maintain the style of the self-titled debut, and conveniently they are some of the album's better songs. I liked approximately six tracks including the intro; among them are "Believe", "This Is Not the End", "Tragedy Bound", and "The Ocean". I did not intensely enjoy too many of my favorites on this album however, unlike I have enjoyed past songs "Rites of Spring", "An Honest Mistake", and "Tyrant". Basically the band sounds like a blend of newer Arctic Monkeys with newer Kaiser Chiefs, except with an electronic touch on occasion. Although I am a fan of both those bands, I dislike The Bravery's take on the style used on The Sun and the Moon, and really was fairly unimpressed with the lyrics as well. Still, the album has a fair amount of good melodies on it, and while I didn't enjoy enough of them to justify a purchase, I'd still give this CD three stars since it was if nothing else a mildly decent effort.