Creaky Boards: Brooklyn is Love

Creaky Boards clearly pwned Coldplay when frontman Andrew Hoepfner uploaded a video onto YouTube comparing his band’s “The Songs I Didn’t Write” against Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida”. Andrew writes in captions that Chris Martin attended one of their shows featuring “The Songs” a year earlier, only to release the similar-sounding song this year. The rest of the album is dripping with Beach Boys falsetto harmonies and walls of sound with such instruments as harmonium and bells. The songs’ themes center around the love of the city of Brooklyn, as the title not-so-subtly suggests. “Brooklyn” features the piano sound of “Puttin’ on the Ritz” with far away castanets, military trumpet (Jason Benjamin), and lush vocal harmonies. The down home banjo reflects the love of what’s home. “Brooklyn, you’re the city I run to / I’m gonna love you forever” croons Hoepfner with a smorgasbord of instruments. The slowed down, half-time direction the music takes reminds the listener of an Annie musical number.