For some people, being a part of one successful band isn't enough, they want more. The Brakes are a group of four such people, they call their dayjobs British Sea Power, The Electric Soft Parade and The Tenderfoot. However, since they have the security of their other bands, it means that they are pretty much free to do whatever they want in the Brakes. As a result, Give Blood is highly contrasting throughout the 16(!), swinging from Country style love songs to angry 10 second snippets, often one after the other, just to keep you on your toes.

Eamon Hamilton seems to have used this opportunity to rant about some of the people that always surround a successful band (his dayjob). In You'll Always Have A Place To Stay he sings, 'We'll go out drinking. Taking coke and cocaine. Try to forget, get high to forget.' In Heard About Your Band, he seems to directly attack those hangers-on that surrounds any successful scene with lines like 'you met electrelane' and 'you know a lot of people in the industry woohoo'. And one for those annoyed by people talking at gigs, in Hi How Are You. 'Hi how are you, won't you shut the fuck up I'm trying to watch the band'

The short sharp shocks are the ones that grab the attention first, just because they pop up at the most unlikely of times. Comma Comma Full Stop is one of them (which does exactly what the title says). At only 6 seconds long, it is also possibly one of the shortest songs recorded ever.

As a complete contrast there are a couple of heartfelt country songs. There is the ace Johnny Cash and June Carter cover with Liela Moss from the Duke Spirit in Jackson and NY Pie, a song that Eamon write about being moved on by the police. Another great collabration is with fellow Brightonites the Pipettes in a cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain's Sometimes Always. In the melodic battle of the album, the winner surely is All Night Disco Party, with its nonsense chorus of 'East West, North South, Left Right, Croque Monsieur, Croque Madame.' It is also a great representation of the album, condensing the amount of silliness, tunes, yelling and the contrasting styles into a space of 2 minutes and 43 seconds.