The Bravery - true New York style

Who: The Bravery - Sam Endicott (vocals), John Conway (keyboard), Michael Zakarin (guitar) Mike Hindert (bass), Anthony Burulcich (drums)What: New York indie electro rock bandWhen: Playing King's Arms, June 13 and Wellington's San Francisco Bath House, June 14There has been some confusion about The Bravery's origins in the past. During their early tours of Britain, fans were often heard muttering about the boys' "fake American accents" as the band came off stage.But there is nothing counterfeit about them. Despite their initial rise to fame in England, after New Zealander Zane Lowe played the boys' single on Radio 1, the band is actually from New York.It was only after Lowe's plug that the boys made a temporary move to London, capitalising on their transatlantic breakthrough and paving the way for their single An Honest Mistake to debut at number 7 on the British charts.It may seem a well-calculated strategy - to target Britain ahead of America - but keyboardist John Conway says there was nothing deliberate about it. It was just the way things panned out.




"The UK picks up on things really fast," says Conway. "Before we even had a record deal or anything, Radio 1's Zane Lowe had heard about us and started playing us on the radio. That caused a lot of people to pay attention to us."The States is so far apart and every little town has its own radio station, it takes a lot longer for things to get going on a national level."Often compared to Las Vegas alt-rockers The Killers, The Bravery followed in the footsteps of fellow New Yorkers, Interpol, who also earned a reputation for being a Yank band with a post-punk Brit sound.It's a sound that has gained a loyal following worldwide, leading them to New Zealand for the first time.The tour comes on the heels of their second album, The Sun and the Moon, which will be re-released on June 3 as a tour edition, complete with a second disc of remixes by the band.The second disc, which the band refers to as the Moon edition, sees all of the album's original 12 tracks re-recorded in the band's signature electro-rock style, as opposed to the lighter, acoustic version heard on the original Sun edition."I think when bands are doing their second album, you kind of get caught between trying to make something that's familiar and identifiable as your sound, and being kind of experimental and progressing as a band and as musicians," explains Conway. "Sometimes people take it too far in either direction. We tried to cheat and did both."The Sun version, which came out last year, was a marked departure from the debut album's synth-heavy sound and allowed the boys to experiment with their musicality.