A British act powerfully infatuated with sounds of the '60s, the Embrooks play rock & roll steeped in garage rock, psychedelia, R&B, and especially freakbeat. The result is strong, hard-edged yet melodic music with a trippy undertow in the guitars, but also a solid dose of fuzz and a rhythm section that's straightforward and propulsive. Their second album, 2000's Our New Day, captured the band in full flight, and after a long layoff, they came back as potent as ever with 2018's We Who Are. The Embrooks were formed in London in 1996 after the breakup of the short-lived garage rock combo the Lyds. A few months after the Lyds dropped their final single, bassist and vocalist Mole (aka Matthew Owen Lambert) and drummer Lois Tozzer recruited guitarist and vocalist Alessandro Cozzi Lepri; they adopted the name the Embrooks and were on their way. After two years of live work, the trio made their recorded debut with a single for Dig the Fuzz Records, "But I Didn't Know Him" b/w "Fight Fire," while a four-song EP titled The Embrooks was issued by Sympathy for the Record Industry that same year. In 1999, the Embrooks brought out their debut album, Separations; Dig the Fuzz distributed the album in the U.K. and Dionysus handled it in the United States. Voxx, an offshoot of the legendary American indie label Bomp, arranged to bring out the second Embrooks album, Our New Day, in 2000. The group toured steadily in the U.K. and Europe, and made occasional trips to North America for live dates. After turning out a handful of singles, the Embrooks delivered their third LP, 2004's Yellow Glass Perspections, for the Spanish Munster Records imprint. While the group had built up a devoted following by this time, they never made enough money to quit their day jobs, and as various work and life commitments put greater demands on their time, the Embrooks broke up in 2005. Munster commemorated the split with the release of 45's & High Times, a collection that brought together all their non-LP single sides as well as some unreleased radio sessions. In 2015, the three members of the Embrooks were approached by the organizers of the Barcelona Gambeat Festival, a weekender devoted to '60s influenced rock, to play a reunion show, and they accepted the offer. The show went well and the trio decided to keep the Embrooks together as a going concern, releasing a single, "Nightmare" b/w "Helen," through State Records in December 2016. In December 2018, the Embrooks issued their belated fourth full-length release, We Who Are, also on State, while a split single with veteran American garage rock revivalists the Fuzztones was released in August 2019 by Germany's Soundflat. ~ Mark Deming