The Bravery

“Believe”
from the album The Sun and the Moon
2007
iTunes

MP3 – “Believe” (radio rip)

Four-fifths of New York-based band the Bravery are still sprawled across mattresses or curled under duvets when drummer Anthony Burulcich gets on the line to talk enthusiastically about the previous night’s shows and the impending release of the band’s sophomore album.

The hard-partying boys played two shows the night before at Arlene’s Grocery in New York City and had stayed up well into the wee hours to celebrate their return to the place where they got their start. But Burulcich decided to forego the partying in favor of a solid 12 hours of sleep and was feeling puffed up with optimism and a bit of ego when he took the phone during a marathon of press interviews via phone from Manhattan.

“It was great to be on that stage again,” he says. “We’re super-psyched and confident about all the songs.”

The Bravery released their debut album in 2005 to critics’ cries of “the next big thing” and “a band to watch.” And while the self-titled album did reasonably well, the band garnered further attention for what was believed to be a fabricated dispute with rival rockers the Killers. (The two bands share the same label and it is believed the dispute was created to generate publicity.)

But the Bravery takes their music seriously and took their time — relatively speaking — to release their second album, The Sun and the Moon, which hits shelves tomorrow.

“We decided we didn’t want to make The Bravery II and make a record that sounds just like the first. We all decided that wouldn’t have been a challenge for us and it wouldn’t have been fun,” he says.

“It still sounds like the Bravery, but there’s more incorporated. There’s more acoustic instruments, as opposed to just your traditional synthesizers. Definitely these songs are a lot more challenging for us, they require a lot more thought.”

Burulcich received musical training from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and was asked to join the Bravery soon after he graduated. Frontman Sam Endicott and keyboardist John Conway met at Vassar College in upstate New York and decided, upon receiving praise from those who heard their material, to put together a full band. They invited Michael Zakarin and Mike Hindert to join, and the band was born.

When they all came together, they were essentially a group of guys who shared a passion for music, but didn’t know much about each other and didn’t know whether they would get along. Somehow though, the random union worked and the band found success soon after they started playing New York clubs.

“The personalities, I guess we got lucky. I hear of people who can’t gel, but we went on tour and we all got along,” he says.

“And I think what helped, too, is things happened fast for us; there was quick success. … We didn’t have time to be at each other’s throats. We were just super-psyched, very lucky, very blessed.”