❉ EXCLUSIVE interview with Brix Smith Start & Steve Trafford, plus album and gig review.
Despite what you may have heard, Brix and the Extricated do not exist solely to supply nostalgia to ageing Fall fans (like me). Though there is undoubtedly an element of that nostalgia, as this album contains four Fall songs, that’s not really the point. Brix and the Extricated are a fully-formed, fully-fledged band in their own right, a tight, cohesive, impressive unit, more than worthy to be considered on their own terms, and this album is an emphatic statement of their intent.
The band consists of Brix Smith Start, here re-launching her music career (hence the album title), former Fall bass player Steve Trafford and Jason Brown on guitars, legendary Fall bass player Steve Hanley on bass, and brother Paul Hanley on drums. The album was recorded live, with no overdubs, and as a result sounds fresh and immediate, a refreshing and invigorating blast of post-punk pop (or should that be post-pop punk?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAfZQGyKUwM
It’s like the older, sassier, wiser sister of The Honey Tangle, Brix’s late 80s album, recorded under the name of The Adult Net. Where that album was polished, poppy, wistful and melancholy, Part Two is rough, punky and angry. It’s the album of a woman who has lived, and is now doing things on her own terms. The anger is retributive, redeeming and righteous, best demonstrated on Something To Lose, a snarling beast with a thunderous Hanley bassline over which Brix bellows, ‘I was good, then I was bad, now I’m fucked. UUUGH! Give me something to looose!” Yes, bellows! Her voice is, at times, the complete opposite of the rather wan, waif-like soprano she used on The Honey Tangle. She roars her way through songs with titles like Pneumatic Violet and Damned For Eternity. The version of Feeling Numb, a Brix-penned Fall track from 1996, blasts out of the speakers as if it was written yesterday. Cracking stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9dY5Okqc5Q
It’s not all sturm und drang, however. Moonrise Kingdom, a song written by Steve Trafford for Fall album Fall Heads Roll (where it was called Midnight in Aspen) is a thing of sparkling tenderness, Brix’s breathy vocals the perfect accompaniment to a twinkling, kaleidoscopic guitar riff. Similarly, Hotel Bloedel, one of the first songs Brix ever wrote for The Fall, is given a respectful treatment here, freeing the song from its original lo-fi trappings and elevating it into a thing of spectral, haunting beauty.
The album ends on a conceptual note with a trio of pieces based around Brix’s Californian home. L.A. was written in 1985 for one of The Fall’s best albums, This Nation’s Saving Grace, a sinister instrumental with a descending bassline and a shuffling intro meant to evoke the image of a police helicopter patrolling the skies above Los Angeles. Sparse lyrics evoke a feeling of paranoia and the song climaxes with Brix repeating, “This is my happening, and it freaks me out.” The version of L.A. here lacks the strange wibbly-wobbly sequencer effect of the original, but is no less striking for it. A brief instrumental follows, Time Tunnel, which (as Brix explained to me in the interview) links L.A. to Hollywood, the album’s stunning climax, and Brix’s favourite song that she has written. Dripping with loathing, paranoia and euphoria, it sounds like Brix has poured her whole life into this song. It skitters along on another thundering Hanley bassline and a sneering yet celebratory escalating guitar riff. Brix quotes herself singing “This is my happening and it freaks me out”, and later, “I’m just a canyon girl, can’t take the beach out of me, bury me in the deep blue sea.” It’s about how Hollywood can crush your dreams and it ends on an alarming note with Brix enacting being crushed by the falling (no pun intended) Hollywood sign. “Ha ha, get off me! I’m falling backwards, stop it, no! Ha ah! No! What are you doing?” We’ve come a long way from the simple punk-pop at the start of the album.
Apparently, the band’s next album will be totally original songs, with no Fall songs. As the original material on Part 2 is at least as good as the Fall material, and in some cases better, this is a sound move. After the (almost literal) cliffhanger of Hollywood, Brix and the Extricated have left us gagging for more.
Over to Brix and Steve…
Interview with Brix Smith Start and Steve Trafford
Before their gig at Bristol Thekla on 9 November, I spoke to Brix Smith Start and Steve Trafford about their album and the history of the band, and many other subjects.
NW: Brix, what’s it like to be back fronting a band and belting out tunes?
BS: I only ever fronted Adult Net, and I only ever did one gig as a front person, so it was a real baptism of fire. It was something I always wanted to do, but for some reason, I didn’t have the confidence, until now, to do it. But when the confidence came, it was immense, and it was like, there was no way I couldn’t do it. And it’s like spirits channel through me every night, I leave my body and something takes over, and it’s absolutely incredible. I just live for playing now. Live for it.
NW: In your autobiography The Rise, The Fall, And The Rise you say that ‘writing the book freed my creativity to play again’, could you elaborate on that?
BS: Writing that book made me feel high every day. There were chapters that were difficult but most of it flowed, and you know, when it’s flowing it’s almost like automatic writing. It comes through you, you get goosebumps! And it was connecting to that channel of creativity, that divine inspiration, which is what I had when I used to write music, and play music, but coming at it from another angle of writing words, because music and words and everything, it’s all just vibration, it’s all connecting the same vibration, so writing absolutely unblocked whatever channel was there, and everything came back. The book saved me.
NW: Your signature guitar style is highly distinctive, very surf-rock with staccato, catchy riffs; it’s all over your Fall songs and you can hear it in the new songs too, how did this style develop?
BS: It was completely natural and totally self-taught. I became obsessed, as a little person, with hooks and riffs. I was fascinated by the craft of songwriting, it started by listening to the radio on the way to summer camp, songs like the Carpenters’ Close To You, or Janis Joplin singing Me And Bobby McGee, or Jimi Hendrix, or whatever was on the radio then, whatever the catchy thing was, the hook in the song used to keep me awake at night, over and over and over in my head, and I was fascinated by the power of the notes going together like a nursery rhyme. I just glommed onto it really early on. So when I started to play guitar, I heard it in my head, exactly what needed to be there in the simplest form.
NW: That’s interesting because it fits right in with what The Fall are about, simple riffs and repetition, right from their early days before you joined.
BS: When The Fall would play that repetitive stuff, I just knew it needed a fine wire of a hook to wind its way through. I was just frustrated that The Fall weren’t the biggest, the coolest most important band at the time. They were completely under-rated, and one of my goals was to bring them to the attention of the mass public – I think like that because I’m American! I could just hear what it needed, the little bits of lightness that it needed, but not to take away from the dark, repetitive nature of The Fall.
NW: Well it worked, during your time The Fall were in the UK Top 40 on more than one occasion!
BS: Yes, and now we’ve got into the charts with the Extricated. So we’re really happy. Charts make you feel good!
NW: Steve, one of the standout tracks on the album is Moonrise Kingdom, a re-working of your song Midnight in Aspen from Fall Heads Roll, how did this come about?
ST: When the band started, the first thing we did was learn songs that Brix had written in The Fall, and songs that Steve [Hanley] had written. Then the rest of the band looked to me and said, we should do one that you wrote when you were in the band. So I chose Midnight in Aspen because it was one I was proud of, but we decided it wouldn’t work if Brix did Mark’s poetry over it, so we thought it was important to re-write it, and put something else in there, and that’s where Brix’s melody and words came from.
BS: You said ‘I’m really proud of this song, it’s one of the best pieces of music I’ve ever written, please can you have a crack at writing lyrics and a melody to go with it?’
ST: Did I say that?!
BS: Yeah! And I thought, what an interesting thing to do. To take the same piece of music but have two completely different writers, writing either side. And I was like, yeah, I’m gonna take that on, and it became this beautiful piece of music, people love it. Tim Burgess [lead singer of The Charlatans] is doing the playlist for Manchester United in a couple of weeks’ time, and they’re going to play it in the stadium to 75,000 people and tweet the playlist to 15 million people. And it’s got so much radio play, and it went in the charts!
NW: Are there any other Fall songs the band is thinking of ‘extricating’?
ST: Er… No!
BS: We’re never going to record another Fall song. Ever! What’s the point? We’re a group of great songwriters, let’s play to our strengths and take it forward! We will probably continue to put some old favourites in the live set, as we love playing them, but to record any more? No. And you have that exclusively, We Are Cult!
NW: Part 2, the album title, I’m taking to mean this is the second part of your music career?
BS: Yeah, The Fall was Part 1, this is Part 2, where the plot changes. This is the next chapter, the next half. So, yeah, Alan McGee thought of that. We couldn’t think of a title, could we?
ST: No, there was quite a few names going round that no-one liked.
BS: We had a list of titles, but nothing seemed to do it justice. So I asked Alan McGee, what should we call it? And he said, well, Part 2! And I said, Oh yeah!. A lot of journalists look at the title and think, Where’s Part 1 and I’m like, duh!
NW: Should it not, strictly speaking, be Part 3? The Fall being Part 1 and The Adult Net album The Honey Tangle (1989) being Part 2? Or even Part 4, with the Neurotica album (1997) being Part 3?
BS: Those weren’t fully-formed, they were straggling at the end of Part 1.
NW: I love The Honey Tangle.
BS: Really?!
NW: Yes, it’s a perfect summer pop album, a fantastic set of songs. Do you ever think of re-working any of those songs, playing them live, like Waking Up In The Sun or Spin This Web?
BS: We have, we’ve played Waking Up In The Sun, and Steve and I have done Incense and Peppermints a number of times. Steve and I sometimes do acoustic sets, taking Extricated, Fall and solo stuff and strip it back, do it in really tight harmonies, for small shows, special shows.
NW: The Brix of The Honey Tangle is a very different Brix to what we hear on Part 2. There’s a lot of anger in your voice, and sometimes, scary roars at the end of songs, which sound fantastic! The anger sounds doesn’t sound negative or depressing, but energised and redemptive. Where did it come from, and is it aimed at anyone in particular?
BS: It’s an exorcism. Well, each song is different, but you know, there’s a lot of years of frustration of not playing music when I didn’t even realise I was meant to be doing it, and there’s a lot of stuff that I hadn’t spoken about or written about, and I really thought that the anger was out of me after writing the book, I thought I’m way past this, but somehow, being together again, with these guys, all of us, I think I’m speaking from collective anger. You know, it was just what was summoned, what came out, stuff that needed to be purged. And sometimes it’s like an exorcism on stage, every night. Just getting it out and leaving it in the room.
NW: You say ‘collective anger’, is it to do with the shared experience of being ex-Fall members?
BS: It’s to do with loads of lot of things, not specifically about being in The Fall. You know, lots of people think Pneumatic Violet’s about Mark, and it’s absolutely not, it’s about a woman.
NW: The final track on the album, Hollywood, is quite stunning, and a world away from the straight-ahead punky pop of the rest of the songs.
BS: It’s a masterpiece, I think! It’s my favourite song, ever, that I’ve ever recorded, written, ever.
NW: It makes for a good companion to L.A., the themes of both songs really fit together, they really flow together.
BS: Well, L.A. was at the time my favourite song I ever wrote, it was a love song to the city that I missed, it was celebrating going to L.A. to find your hopes and dreams, and to make it. And L.A. is such a seductive, sleazy, gorgeous, dirty city, and that’s what the original L.A. was and I thought I really want to write a song about L.A. thirty years on, because it’s not the same any more. It’s the same city, but you go there now, and it breaks you, it breaks your dreams. First of all it was the city about being alive, now it’s the city that will kill you. It’s so superficial and people go there, and the streets are paved with hopes and dreams, but you have way more failures than successes, and it breaks people. So, with those three songs, what I wanted to do was connect L.A. to Hollywood, with a sonic time tunnel.
So the original L.A. and our version both begin with a helicopter going over the city. What that represents is in L.A. when someone’s on the run, police helicopters and news helicopters follow them and shine lights into alleys, so you’re always hearing helicopters circling looking for, like, gang members. And then the sonic time tunnel comes and it moves from the helicopters of L.A. to the supersonic jet of Hollywood, to move it into the future. So it’s a triptych, three pieces of music together: L.A, Time Tunnel, then Hollywood, and that’s the end of the album.
So what we consciously did with this album was to begin with familiar-sounding songs, stomping pumping driving Fall-type songs that people would expect from us, and take the listener on a sonic journey throughout the album to where we’re gonna go for the next one. Gently taking them by the hand to where we’re going. And it was all very very conscious. And I’m thrilled when people say they love Hollywood, because I’ve never loved singing anything so much.
NW: The way Hollywood ends with you laughing and exhorting ‘Ha ha, get off me! I’m falling backwards, stop it, no! Ha ha! No! What are you doing?’ is quite disturbing.
BS: Yeah, I’m underneath the Hollywood sign, and I’m getting pushed off the cliff. All that end part of Hollywood was completely ad-libbed in the studio, I had no idea what was going to come out of my mouth. It was crazy.
NW: This year has seen many revelations about male abuse of power in the entertainment industries and now in politics – when I heard the end of Hollywood, I thought it was a reference to that –
BS: But that is a reference to that. Obviously I wrote it before the Weinstein revelations, but I have a history of doing that, of writing songs that are pre-cognitive. Like Terry Waite Sez, things like that. Mark Smith has a history of that too and we have a history of that together, as we’re both channelling stuff. But the Hollywood thing, that’s the whole point of Hollywood, it’s so sleazy, you go there, and you sell your soul, and you end up being literally destroyed. And the other thing, why it took place below the sign, the sign is super-iconic, but when I grew up there, my house, where I lived with my Mom, looked out over Capitol Records and the Hollywood sign. I saw it every day when I went to school. So it was a big part of my formation.
NW: Do you think that now all this is coming out, do you think that real, positive change will come?
BS: It’s like shining a light under a tarpaulin, and watching the rats scurry. It’s been going on so long, and for various reasons, people haven’t felt able to speak about stuff, or they’re worried for their career, and fear is the worst thing. And of course, shining a light on anything that’s negative is gonna make it unpleasant, but it’s also gonna cause a change. I also believe Donald Trump is gonna cause a change, as heinous as he is, it’s gonna make a positive change. You have to believe that, otherwise, what’s the point?
NW: Do you think that power, being in a position of power, have enabled men – and it is almost exclusively men – to get away with this sort of thing?
BS: Power is the currency in Hollywood. It’s who you are and what you’ve done, and how much money you’ve made. That is the currency there. I’ve been in situations like that, I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been in situations like that in Britain, in the music industry, in the 80s. I’ve had people pull me onto their laps and do, like, weird stuff, but to be honest, I never let it faze me. And yes, I was raped, but that was way before, and obviously now if I feel in terrible danger, I will fight. But it happens all the time, to young attractive girls.
NW: Going back to music, Brix, you were away from the scene for quite some time, what led to Brix and the Extricated and Part 2?
BS: What happened was, while I was writing my book, secretly I was playing my guitar at home, and nobody knew. It was a cathartic thing, I would sing and weep every day for two months. Nobody knew, not even my husband. I never thought anything would come of it, nor did I want to… it was just… but actually, yes, I did, I was writing songs, and thinking, something’s gonna happen, this is amazing. Then [in 2014] Steve Hanleys’ book [The Big Midweek, about his time in The Fall] came out and he had a book a launch in Manchester at the Deaf Institute. I went up there with Marcia Schofield [former Fall keyboard player who was in the band at the same time as Brix] and Steve had put together a band, including Paul Hanley [ex Fall drummer] on drums, Jason Brown on guitar, Una Baines [founding Fall member] on keyboards, John Robb as a guest vocalist – and I don’t remember who else – and they played a bunch of songs, including Mr. Pharmacist. Loads of ex-Fall members were there like Craig [Scanlon, guitarist], me and Marcia.
ST: I was there!
BS: Were you?! I didn’t know then though. It was really great, and when they played Mr Pharmacist, something ripped through me and I thought, oh my God, why didn’t they ask me to play? But of course, no-one knew I was secretly playing and writing. So after the gig I went up to Steve – I hadn’t seen him for eighteen years, or any of them except Marcia. I said, Hey why didn’t you ask me? And he said ‘Well, we never thought you’d do it,’ and I said, well, I’m secretly playing again, and he said, ‘Why don’t we get together and see if we can write?’ And sure enough, within a month, we were writing together. The minute we plugged in, Steve and I, we went, woah! This is amazing! Then Steve suggested that we put a band together with his brother Paul on drums, and Steve Trafford on guitar, an amazing guitarist, who used to play bass in The Fall…
ST: I’d known Steve and Paul Hanley for years, they used to come and watch me play when I used to work with Paul Heaton. When I read Steve’s book, I sent him an email, quite a soppy email, saying how much I felt vindicated by reading the book, because it echoed all the experiences I’d had in The Fall. Suddenly it all made sense, it was like, oh right, it wasn’t personal, he [Mark E. Smith] did that to Steve as well. And Steve replied, you’ve gotta come out and do these book launches with me, so I started playing guitar at some of these readings, and then we did the Christmas gig with the full band, and everything just rollercoastered after that.
BS: We went into a rehearsal room, with Steve Trafford, Steve Hanley, Paul, Jason Brown and me, we all plugged in, and it was the same thing again, like the sum of all the parts, everything was just perfect. We got a gig in Manchester at Christmas in 2014, and by the time we got off the stage we were offered seven more gigs. And it became a thing. We were like, we can do this!
NW: So obviously the next step was an album, Part 2. It’s pretty fantastic! It has a really punchy, immediate sound.
ST: It’s all live, by the way, there’s no overdubs, you know.
BS: The whole album was made live over one and a half days. We recorded six songs on the first day, four on the second, and I recorded most of the vocals live. Only the harmonies were added later, and that’s it.
NW: I really like the sound of the guitars on this album, the interplay between you two and Jason.
BS: Because they’re both, like, seriously brilliant guitarists, and I’m the simple bonehead hook-puncher, the detail in the way that they play is amazing. It sounds simple on one level, then you listen to it closely and think, holy shit, how are they even doing that? It’s because in the Extricated, we have an interesting guitar thing happening. Three great guitarists, and no-one playing lead or rhythm. With Steve and Jason, it’s completely ‘conversational’, and I come in with the third guitar, to, like, drive the spike in. It’s a wonderful thing, and on the record, they [Steve and Jason] are both hard-panned, so one’s here and one’s there and it’s just the perfect blend of different styles. We cottoned onto that pretty early on.
NW: How does the songwriting work between the five musicians in the band?
BS: Everything’s split five ways. Collaborative. I always do the lyrics and the melody, and we hit upon a recipe early on, where one of them brings a riff into the rehearsal room, or starts with something, and then everyone adds their part, and they get it down and send it to me in London over email, and I listen to it at home and write the melody and the words. It works so brilliantly that way, and I then send it back, and they love it, or… you know! I’ve only ever chucked out one song.
ST: I remember that one.
BS: But I chucked it out and then Hollywood came. So it was the right thing to do.
NW: Perhaps it could be on the next album?
BS: No, we chucked it way out! We’ve got some really good new stuff coming.
NW: I really like the version of Hotel Bloedel on the album, it’s good to hear it done, shall we say, straight? I love the weirdness of the original but it’s great to have this new version too. Both can stand alone on their own merits. [Note: Brix wrote this song when she was 17 and it ended up on The Fall’s 1983 album Perverted By Language.]
BS: [On Perverted By Language] I didn’t know they were recording, I was rehearsing by myself and my guitar wasn’t even plugged in, and I was singing into a guitar mic, not even a vocal mic, and they just took it. I was practising, thinking no-one was listening, but they were listening in the control room and I thought they were just getting the sound right, but suddenly they said, That’s it, it’s done! And I was like Nooo, I’m not happy with it. And I was never happy with it.
ST: It’s a great song to get your teeth into, I really wanted to get my hands on it, it’s got this 12-string kind of Byrds-y thing, which suits Brix perfectly. It was a really enjoyable experience, recording that.
BS: Your guitar part was so beautiful, it really makes it.
NW: Steve, you played bass in The Fall on such tracks as Blindness and What About Us?, why did you switch to guitar when you joined the Extricated?
ST: I’m not a bass player! Basically, was asked to join The Fall because they needed a bass player, so I lied and said I was a bass player. And the next thing I knew was I was touring America. And I got good on the bass whilst I was in The Fall. Do I miss it? I sometimes miss that power you have over a band, the kind of gear-changes you can put a band through with the bass.
BS: I actually started out as a bass player. Bass is the ultimate vibration that glues everything together. Writing songs on the bass is amazing, I find my melodies are even stronger when you have to weave them around a bassline. There’s more ways to weave, and bass just vibrates through your body, and it’s the glue between the rhythm and the melody. It’s a powerful instrument!
NW: So what of the future?
BS: We’ve got a quarter if not a half of the next album written. And it’s as good as Part 2 if not better.
NW: Thank you Brix and Steve. Nice to meet you.
Brix and the Extricated, Bristol Thekla, 9 November 2017
The Thekla, once known as The Old Profanity Showboat and owned by Vivian Stanshall and his wife Ki Longfellow, is a much-loved Bristol venue under threat from developers. Permission has been given for flats opposite, from which noise complaints will inevitably come when people move in. It’s a battle that’s been fought in Bristol before with The Fleece, and that time won. For now, though, the future of the Thekla is in doubt. It would be a shame for such a unique venue to disappear from the scene. Unthinkable that events like tonight, the debut Bristol gig by Brix and the Extricated, might not happen in the future.
So revel in the now, cherish the present. And what a present. Live, Brix and the Extricated are thrilling, a pummelling headrush of psych-punk-power-pop and that’s enough of the music journalism clichés. The band took to the stage, which was shrouded in darkness and dry ice (at least that’s how I remember it), one by one, launching into the snarling groove of Something To Lose. I simply stood and absorbed the fact that I was watching Fall bass legend, Steve Hanley, performing live once again (and for some reason, wearing shades!) Truth be told, I could have watched Hanley perform solo Fall basslines all night. But then, Brix appeared, looking menacing, shrouded in a hoodie, and all thoughts of nostalgia were banished. Her eyes made up like some sci-fi goddess, Brix threw herself into the song, punching the air and performing high-kicks that from where I stood looked alarmingly close to Jason Brown’s guitar. The sound was tight, pinned down by the Hanley brothers’ bass and drums, and richly embroidered by the twin guitar attack of Brown and former Fall bassist Steve Trafford. The band then tore through two Fall songs, Feeling Numb and 2X4, stunning, perfect renditions, and a joy to hear for the old Fall fans in the audience.
Proceedings slowed down a little for the sparkling, spectral beauty of Moonrise Kingdom, then ramped up again for Pneumatic Violet and Teflon. My old schoolmate Lee Hudson, who had introduced me to The Fall way back in 1986, admitted he was blown away by the former, completely against his expectations. Then came another Fall song, U.S. 80’s – 90’s, from their 1986 album Bend Sinister. This was the song that got me into The Fall, and Bend Sinister remains my favourite album of all time. So for me, hearing this was a big, big deal. I’d heard The Fall perform it live a few times before, most notably at Birmingham Hummingbird in March 1988, where they’d opened with it. (And where, incidentally, I met Brix outside the Fall tour bus before the gig, and she signed my ticket). But this version… Blown away. Completely. It was the best version of U.S. 80’s – 90’s I’d ever heard. Somehow, the guitarists managed to replicate the piercing wails and weird electronics which punctuate the song. Wow. What more can I say? WOW.
My head remained floating somewhere near the ceiling for the rest of the gig. Cruiser’s Creek was introduced by Brix thus: “I can’t think of a more appropriate venue, ever, for this song.” Brix is fully in the moment at all times, inhabiting each song and bringing it to life with passion and physicality.
The gig climaxed, as does the album, with the ‘Hollywood triptych’ of L.A., Time Tunnel, and Hollywood (Brix’s favourite ever song). Hollywood is a truly amazing achievement, lyrically a love/hate letter to Brix’s place of birth, and musically a thrilling marriage of punk pop and psych. But that wasn’t the end – the band came on for an encore of two final Fall songs, Totally Wired and Big New Prinz, the latter with the familiar refrain of ‘He. Is Not. Appreciated!’ Again, perfect versions, and you can tell that the band really loves to perform these songs. The band left the stage one by one until only Steve Hanley remained, pummelling out the bassline to Big New Prinz as only he can. So, I sort of got my wish of a solo Hanley performance, however brief! And then he was gone and the gig was over. And my head eventually returned to its usual place atop my shoulders.
One last thing. I am an old Fall fan, and so is Lee (he won’t mind me saying that I’m sure), so naturally, we are the prime audience for this band. ‘Preaching to the converted’, as it were. But I have to say that the audience at this gig was not completely made up of such as us. There was a refreshing number of young faces to be seen, some of whom can’t have been born until Brix left The Fall for the second time, let alone the first. One incident sticks out which goes to show that Brix and the Extricated are a band for the future, not the past. The moment Pneumatic Violet kicked in, I (a six foot two bloke somewhat on the heavy side) was shoved aside by a thin, young girl with blue-dyed short-cropped hair who proceeded to dance with manic gleeful enthusiasm in front of the stage for the entire remainder of the gig. During the encore Brix reached down and briefly clasped the girl’s hand. This, to me, is the enduring image of the evening.
Brix and the Extricated. She, and they, are appreciated. Very much.
❉ Main photo credit: Jamie MacMillan Photos: Twitter @jamiemacphotos | Facebook: @jamiemacmillanphotos | Instagram: @jamie_macmillan_photos
❉ Brix & The Extricated – ‘Part 2’ is out now on Blang Records. Order here from Piccadilly Records.