The Chapman Family – Burn Your Town (Album Review)
Monday, 07 March 2011
Written by Rob Sleigh
If you've happened to stumble across this Stockton-on-Tees quartet over the past five years, you may be pleased – or not so pleased – to hear that they have finally got around to finishing and releasing their debut album. And it has indeed been a long wait – or a reasonably long wait at the very least. Some of you may have already noticed that two of the band's singles that have previously been taken from this album were released two whole years ago. One of the tracks in question, entitled 'Kids' – yes, another song called 'Kids' – even gained the group some minor success, receiving a fairly significant amount of airplay. Since then, the band have made a few festival appearances, done at least one major headlining tour and performed on the NME Radar Tour. Here they are, two years later and the all-important question is... what's the score? Is 'Burn Your Town' worth the wait? Well, the short answer is... yes. Pretty much.
Yes, the Chapmans are here and, rest assured, The Partridge Family they ain’t. The latest in a recent spate of post-punk revivalist groups, The Chapman Family successfully bring doom, gloom, chaos and berserk energy along with them to the proceedings. More recent singles 'All Fall' and 'Anxiety' make themselves known early on and immediately sound like a mixture of Placebo's grimy and punked-up alt-goth-rock with the Northern charm of Maximo Park. 'Burn Your Town' has all the qualities of a straightforward indie-pop album trapped in a much darker and occasionally wonderful-sounding nightmare. A good example of this is the aforementioned single 'Kids', a grungy-sounding punk song in which frontman Kingsley Chapman is heard trading in his deep, operatic vocals for a losing-the-plot kind of Kurt Cobain-style scream.
And what about the other members of The Chapman Family? Well, there’s Pop Chapman, whose fuzzed-up and dirty-sounding basslines provide a shamelessly twisted punk edge to the overall structure of the band’s intensely serious tone. Phil Chapman – the drummer, who is every once in a while given the golden opportunity to show-off how handy he is with a set of skins, such as on the track ‘Million Dollars’, with its feedback-ridden climax. Last but not least is guitarist Paul Chapman who, alongside Kingley, helps to create the pummelling, grungy feel of ‘Burn Your Town’.
It may be a late start for The Chapman Family, but by making up for it with an early start in 2011, this will surely help the band to make a proper go of their foreseeable reputation. With an album that manages to sound reasonably fresh while also seeking to remind of some earlier styles, The Chapman Family will almost certainly be re-appearing on numerous occasions over the next few months and may even be competing as one of the bands of the year in the latter part of 2011. Watch this space.
Stereoboard Rating: 7/10
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And what about the other members of The Chapman Family? Well, there’s Pop Chapman, whose fuzzed-up and dirty-sounding basslines provide a shamelessly twisted punk edge to the overall structure of the band’s intensely serious tone. Phil Chapman – the drummer, who is every once in a while given the golden opportunity to show-off how handy he is with a set of skins, such as on the track ‘Million Dollars’, with its feedback-ridden climax. Last but not least is guitarist Paul Chapman who, alongside Kingley, helps to create the pummelling, grungy feel of ‘Burn Your Town’. 
