Brotherly love for a bit of Britpop attitude

Last November, a video did the rounds on YouTube of an unknown band called Brother dragging their amps and instruments to an empty car park in Slough, plugging in and playing.

In between shots of them performing were mini-interviews with the quartet bemoaning their old, mundane jobs, smoking and railing against “The Man” who had told them to turn down their racket. The video was like something from 1996; the laddish foursome looked more like Ocean Colour Scene impersonators than a new band from 2010, and their music was all snarling Liam Gallagher-esque vowels.

While music journalists all over the country held their heads in their hands and wondered if the last 15 years had been in vain, a new generation of music fans liked what they heard. However, Viva Brother, as they’re now called, thanks to a recent name change, had arrived and their forthcoming debut album Famous First Words suggests they’re going to be around for a good while.

“That video did work in our favour,” says drummer Frank Colucci, sitting in the lobby of his Chicago hotel. Normal mouthpiece and singer of the band Lee Newell is currently still in bed and resting his sore throat ahead of their US tour.

“We always knew we’d be a band that people loved or hated, but no one remembers the boring in-between bands that people don’t mind.” The band have been in the US for almost a week now, arriving to play on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the nightly talk show with an audience of more than two million. Since last year, Viva Brother have been flying back and forth between the UK and US, promoting their music with as much enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic.

“It was something we were always keen to do. To build something in one place, then have to start afresh in another, didn’t appeal to us,” continues Colucci. “We’d rather put the extra effort in and do both, which means more travelling, but also more fun as well.”

Audiences in America are lapping up Viva Brother’s typically English sensibilities. From the way they dress and speak to the music they make.

“They like the fact we sound so typically English. I think Americans like things to be exaggerated; the size of their cars, their portions of food,” says 22-year-old Colucci. “I think they see us as an exaggerated version of an English band.”

Famous First Words is a bratty, youthful album with nods to the likes of Blur, Supergrass and Shed Seven. It’s difficult not to be swept along by the likes of Darlings Buds Of May, Still Here or High Street Low Lives.

“We do get compared to Oasis, but I think that has more to do with an attitude, and the fact Lee wore round sunglasses in our first ever photoshoot,” he says.

Produced by Stephen Street, who famously worked with The Smiths, Blur and The Cranberries, Famous First Words was recorded without a hitch. Street helped round off the band’s corners to bring together their songs, which were written over the past two years. The album, Colucci hopes, will prove that they have talent to back their often outspoken interviews.

“We’ve never censored our opinions in the press, and some people only see that and don’t want to listen to the music. I just don’t think honesty is what people want to hear. But if you’re going to ask our opinion on something, then we’re going to tell you in the same way we would tell a mate in the pub.”

I’ve interviewed Lee Newell, Viva Brother’s frontman, a number of times now, and in search of his rumoured vitriolic, outspoken streak, asked him about Coldplay and U2, both headliners at Glastonbury this year and easy targets for even the most mild-mannered of musicians. His reply was that he liked Coldplay, aside from their last single and while he didn’t like Bono et al, he couldn’t “argue with their success”.

Today, Frank only has words of praise for fellow bands. It might not win them as many headlines as the Britpop-inspired image they’d like to convey, but Viva Brother are simply very nice, polite boys – and there should never be anything wrong with that.

Viva Brother, Hull University, September 23; Sheffield Leadmill, September 24; Leeds O2 Academy, September 25.

Viva Brother – A name change and the sound of ‘gritpop’

Viva Brother are Lee Newell, Josh Ward, Sam Jackson and Frank Colucci.

The name change from Brother to Viva Brother came after a Celtic band called Brother filed a lawsuit.

At one of their first London gigs, singer Lee Newell walked on stage and declared: “Anyone who doesn’t want to see the future of British music, leave now.”

The band, from Slough, describe their music as “Gritpop”. “We know Britpop is a dirty word,” says Newell, “but we don’t care.”

Viva Brother release their debut album Famous First Words on August 1