The Embrooks are back...

Break-ups are, as we all know, often permanent, but one of the greatest things about rock and roll is that almost as often, its break-ups aren’t. What’s more, the flame can be reignited years, maybe even decades later. Ask Young Richard and the Lions, or the Sonics, or the Chocolate Watchband, all of whom have put out new music decades after calling it quits.

Add the Embrooks to that list. Perhaps their break-up wasn’t as long -- and perhaps less solidified than the bands above. But we here at Garagerocktopia are just as happy to see them making beautiful music once again. And make no mistake -- the band’s latest offering, We Who Are, is quite the beautiful outing.

The band formed in 1996 and called it quits in 2005. They did resurface in 2016 to put out a great couple of songs, “Nightmare,” and one of their very best, “Helen.” In December, the band released We Who Are, demonstrating that the band’s ability to come up with great hooks and impassioned songs hasn’t diminished one speck.

While Our New Day, their first album, is tough to top as an amazing musical pick-me-up, We Who Are just might serve as a better showcase for all of what the band has to offer. To cut right to the chase, if hook-driven, staccato-beat upbeat rock and roll is a thing for you -- as it is for us here, it’s hard to find a twelve-song collection that hits the mark more solidly than this.

Trying to fit any band, especially one who’s been around since 1996, into a neat box is always a dicey proposition at best, and the Embrooks don’t make that any easier.

Here at Garagerocktopia, we’ve never insisted a band sound too ‘60s to earn our admiration. That said, you could slip Who We Are into the soundtrack of a movie about Swinging London and nobody would be the wiser.

Alessandro Cozzi-Lepri propels every song with no chintz on the guitar fuzz. Lois Tozer proves that the Kenny Jones school of drumming is still alive and well, while Mole Lambert’s bass and vocals leave every song with exactly what it needs.

The album gets off to a blazing start with “Going But Not Gone,” a tour-de-force of fuzz and tremolo. Things let up very little with a remake of ‘Nightmare,” with its mod-ish feel. In fact, there’s really no let-up with the first six songs. “Human Living Vampire” channels the subdued fury of ‘60s and leans more U.S. garage than freakbeat. ‘Have You Ever Loved Someone” also tilts to this side of the Atlantic, albeit more in a blue-eyed soul way, while “‘Til Tomorrow” has California cool written all over it.

The pace, though not the quality, begins to slow a little bit on songs like “Riot on Kingsland Road,” “Baby From the South” and “I’m Coming Home,” all of which readily recall first-wave mod bands like the Action, high energy, thumping songs with wicked guitar hooks.

In short, on We Who Are, the Embrooks give us 12 terrific reasons to be so happy that they’re back.


We have some other features already in the works here at Garagerocktopia. Artists have been sending us some very cool stuff. As always, we don’t make any guarantees in stone but we’re happy to say we’ve gotten a lot of very promising music sent to us, and we’re always happy to spread the word about about bands that are playing the way-out kinds of music we profile here. Send us a line and we’ll talk.

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