The Bravery Make Friends and Enemies on the Road

Posted on May 30th 2007 10:00AM by Jolie Lash
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Synth rockers turned, well, straight-up rockers the Bravery have embarked on a solo U.S. tour with support from Scotland's the Cinematics. And life on the road again has been good for the New York band, who are making friends and fans thanks to their new album 'The Sun and the Moon.' According to frontman Sam Endicott though, he himself has made a few enemies, too, thanks to a little time spent in local arcades. "What happens is some hotshot will be talking big about how they are good at Ms. Pacman, and they always want to take me on," Endicott tells Spinner. "And I'm like, 'You don't know what you're getting into here.' And they're like, 'Whatever, I'll kick your a**.' [At that point], I just kick old school and play for so long that it gets very boring."

When the Bravery aren't on stage, or Endicott in a video game parlor, his bandmates like drummer Anthony Burulcich and keyboardist John Conway take competition on the road. "There's definitely some Guitar Hero," Endicott says of tour bus gaming. "Anthony and John like going head to head. Michael [Zakarin, guitarst] is the Air Hockey champion."

With such spirited gaming in full swing these days, you can imagine what the studio was like last summer during the recording 'The Sun and the Moon.' There, the Bravery had not games but a host of instruments to try and better each other, thanks to supplier, super producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan). When it came to nailing sounds down though, there was only one master: O'Brien himself. "He has an encyclopedic knowledge of music," Endicott says. "You could play him an old T-Rex record and be like, 'What the f*** is this sound?' and he can tell you right off the bat. And he's just really good at making you reach your potential."