100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s #68 The Bravery – An Honest Mistake

Released: 2005

For decades the cultural highway across the Atlantic had ensured that Britain and America shared at least some musical experiences; from The Beatles to Nirvana, the ‘special relationship’ often meant that a college kid in Iowa could be listening to the same things as one in Islington.

Normally there were some subtle refinements to the respective blueprints, or in the case of the Sex Pistols a tidal wave of self promoting blarney. But by the early twenty first century many of these influences were reincarnated directly into the mould of a group from Las Vegas called The Killers. Through Brandon Flowers publicly admitted desire to play back the new wave sounds of Britain’s early 1980’s to millions of new ears, overnight an American band were big over here by sounding like an ageing pub jukebox. It did not go unnoticed.

The Bravery emerged from New York at around the same time, but if anything their derivation was even more brazen. With An Honest Mistake they reached an apex; singer Sam Endicott blew out his verses in a rich deep drawl which would be copied by White Lies, whilst the whole thing was so obviously an homage to Duran Duran’s Girls On Film that the daddies’ swift offer of a support slot felt inevitable. All that aside, it was reminder of why and indeed how the miserabalism of post punk had been seen off by a conglomerate of Mods, New Romantics and Synth Poppers, of the pomp and hedonism they offered in an age of otherwise drab misery. “It was an honest mistake” Endicott crooned breezily, seeking neither permission or forgiveness for it. He didn’t need to.