EAMON Hamilton put away his Loudon Wainwright III delusions to form Brakes with Brighton friends from British Sea Power and Electric Soft Parade.
“I’d been singing acoustic songs – it was called anti-folk at the time – when I basically wanted to be Loudon, but Alex and Tom [guitar and drums] and Mark [bass] and I thought the songs would sound great in a band, and as soon as we went into the rehearsal room there was a telepathy between us,” says Eamon.
“Every band is different, but with us there’s an instinctive feeling of where to go next, and when that happens it’s a great feeling.”
From those 2003 beginnings, Brakes have blossomed to the point of releasing their third album, Touchdown, on the Rough Trade label on Monday. By then, they will have introduced their new songs in York at The Duchess tonight.
“I think the songs are definitely progressing. A lot of them, I come up with the melody and the guitar chords and they just take it apart and say it should be like this,” says Eamon. “Other songs come out of jams and riffs and they’re the ones we feel really good about this time.”
Touchdown took shape over a year in Brighton, New York and in a “field in Oxfordshire”, otherwise known as Truck Studios.
Why New York, Eamon? “I got married last September and my wife lives here,” he says, on the phone from Brooklyn before returning to Britain for the Touchdown tour.
“We met on the internet, on MySpace, not in a weird way, more of a ‘hello’ and we took it from there. She had been to see Brakes a few times, so she knew who I was, but I didn’t know who she was!”
She happened to be Koren Zailckas, acclaimed author of Smashed, the autobiographical novel about her love affair with alcohol from the age of 14. He duly bought a copy, read it and still agreed to meet up in New York. “She had a week given to her at the Chelsea Hotel and that’s where we did our first dating!” recalls Eamon.
His marriage has impacted upon his songwriting. “It’s given me a lot of hope: the joy of open romance and the positive effect of love,” he says, pointing to the sentiments of one new song in particular, Oh! Forever.
“We hadn’t really done romantic songs before.” Why? “I hadn’t really had romance in my life or not to that extent that I wanted to commit for the rest of my life.”
Eamon even wrote the self-explanatory First Dance – the album’s hidden track – for his wedding-day party. “It was a song born out of necessity. I couldn’t decide on a song for our first dance (True True Love by The Corvairs? Baby I Love You by The Ramones? Pretty Thing by Bo Diddley?) so I decided to write one.”
Not easy, given the litany of love songs. “You just start with the best and progress from there. The history of music is pretty big,” he says. Koren’s reaction upon hearing it was to cry. Was that because it was so good, Eamon? “Hopefully! No, she loved it!”
Hopefully, Brakes’s new songs will be similarly loved. You may even have heard some of them last year, should you have attended his acoustic gig in York when billed as Eamon Hamilton from Brakes.
“I did about a week of dates when I had some ideas for songs and thought I’d make up lyrics on stage each night,” he says. “Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. The trouble was, I’d start the next song and I’d forget the lyrics I’d just made up for the song before!”
Whatever the route, now we have Touchdown.
•Brakes play The Duchess, York, tonight. Tickets: £8 on 08700 600 100; £10 on the door.
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