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'Family Snaps'

Jamie Rowland [Pennyblackmusic.co.uk]
Britain’s best kept secret, I’m Being Good, release their long awaited fourth album 'Family Snaps' on Jonson Family records. The Brighton-based band is lead by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Clare, who de-tunes his instrument to give a Sonic Youth-ish quality to the songs. The other members of the band are guitarist/drummer David Ewan Campbell, guitarist/drummer Tom Barnes and new member Stuart O’Hare on bass.
The album opens with ‘Owl Service’, one of two songs on the album to have featured on the band's last Peel session in 2003. It’s a post-rock instrumental which has a strong flavour of Slint to it, going from quiet guitar noodling to thrashy musical attacks in an effortless flow.
The next song, ‘Last Few Days’, was also featured in said Peel session. This track is one of the most like Sonic Youth on the album. O’Hare’s bass line weaves through heavy layers of distortion; Clare’s vocals are full of rage. The song also has the first of many stop-start moments on the album.
‘Crash Land of Nod’ sounds like a de-tuned Pavement, while ‘Sixteen Children’s Eyes’ is one of the Family Snaps’ more poppy moments, making it one of the first tracks to really jump out at you and get stuck in your head. There is a sweetness to the song, but also an underlying menace; a characteristic found in past I’m Being Good tracks.
‘Hell is Small’ features guest vocalist Makiko Mori. The song is another example of the softer side of I’m Being Good, but the lyric "How we exploit them…" again reveals that not all is as sweet as it seems.
‘Asymetrical Twins’ is a real stand-out on the album. With a pounding bass-line reminiscent of Arab on Radar and a slightly bizarre vocal, the song is like a punk track that’s been captured by art students for use in freakish experiments.
‘Hey Sheriff’ is on of the most skewed sounding tracks on the album, the guitars de-tuned to a degree where it almost sounds like the band don’t really know how to play, but still somehow managing to sound pretty damn good. It tries to become something close to usual at the end, but doesn’t quite get there.
‘Armchair Thriller’ is another stomping good track, the band going at it hammer and tongs. This track is equal parts punk, metal and post-rock, and it sounds fantastic.
The album finishes with ‘Fuck Your Flag’. This is a slow, Mogwai-esque piece of music, and again has that false fragility I’m Being Good do so well. It also has more false endings than ‘Lord of the Rings; The Return of the King’, and probably goes on about 8 minutes longer than is really necessary. For those who do persevere through the full 16 minutes of the track, there is a nice tinkly noise at the end as a reward for your efforts.
'Family Snaps' is a brilliant collection of alternative songs and a welcome return from these musical stalwarts, who have now been soldiering on for some 12 years. It pains me to see how little recognition a lot of bands in the UK get, especially when they are as inventive and imaginative as I’m Being Good. Do them and yourself a favour, and buy this record.

Rough Trade website
i'm being good are a four-piece from brighton. 'family snaps' is their fourth full-length album. screes of detuned howl, cymbals scraping dissonantly off their axes, silences gaping like the gentler passages of a rollercoaster: this is i'm being good's art. they play an unsettling game of peek-a-boo with ghostly specters of ear-bleed whiteout, playfully swinging girders of noise at their flinching audience and never dribbling even an ounce of machismo

'8 Of Us R Dead'

Stewart Lee [Sunday Times, 2003]
The album (8 OF US R DEAD) collects 10 years of outtakes, singles and rare songs, but it's not possible to trace an evolutionary line through the band's erratic development. "Duped by Slint", for example, namechecks the Kentucky quintet with whom the band share superficial similarities, over a fuzzy guitar riff stolen from The Nutcracker Suite and played in the style of the Japanese prog-rockers Ruins. Here's to another decade of such diversions

from 'Rough Guides.com'
For over a decade now I’m Being Good have been forcing indie guitars through their sonic mincer, producing some of the most adventurous, compelling and distorted rock you are ever likely to hear. And yet, somehow, few people have yet picked up on them. 8 Of Us R Dead, the band’s latest release, offers a retrospective scamper through their catalogue, pulling together singles, B-sides and other hard-to-find gems. At times the I’m Being Good sound tucks atonally into a stack of Sonic Youth-styled layerings (producing a delicious musical equivalent of puff pastry); elsewhere lead singer Andrew Clare screams like an electrified grizzly bear over a fuzzed guitar onslaught that boasts more changes of direction than a game of Pac-Man. They even create something resembling country on the exquisite “Dire Darling”. I’m Being Good are the best band you’ve never heard, and 8 Of Us R Dead is both a great way to change that fact, and a vehicle that’ll alter the way you view guitar music forever.

from WFMU.org
I sure do miss the bungee-jump guitar antics of Trumas Water and Polvo (I think the Brits have named it "squirrel rock" if I am not mistaken), and despite all the angular, edgy, wound-too-tight axeslinging bands around these days, I only hear real innovation in a handful. Uberhund is one of them, England's I'm Being Good is another. They're too much of a mess to be lumped in with the ultra-organized math rock contingent, but the clusters of weirdness they provide on any drop of the needle and the definite threads of ideas that hold it all together put them up there with Deerhoof as fine purveyors of falling apart methodically. This is their 3rd or 4th record, and they're totally boss.

'Sub Plot'

[Schoolofhardcocks magazine]
a much darker, more tangled number that ‘poisonous life’. this CD contains 6 twisted, nervy adventures into mystery rock. possibly the only band still trying to use music as a form of expression rather than as some kind of detatched fucking genre-points scheme. i’m not saying they MEAN it, just that they FEEL it. and another thing: they ROCK.

Reviewed by David Coleman
Looking at the CD contents of 11 songs and 65 minutes, my instincts tell me that we’re going to have some weird instrumental stuff popping up. Correct. I’m Being Good are fond of the slightly peculiar and track 2 (sorry I didn’t get a track listing) is a pure slice of avant-garde noise-rock. Compare this to track 3 - a sort of Pavement-meets-Grandaddy affair and you’re left feeling confused and unsure as to what to expect next. Despite this I’m still surprised by the 8.32 epic that follows. It traverses ambient twiddling to angry shouting in under 2 minutes before progressing in palm-muted chaos. And so the confusion continues. In my eyes at least I’m Being Good are showing potential with their melodic material. With their more abstract work however they are just being plain weird. 5/10

Andrew Kingston, [PROBEmagazine, may2001]
Here’s a tough one to review. Not because Sub Plot is anything less than a spark chasing, blister bursting slab of sonic subversion, but more because it’s easy to categorise on the one hand, and difficult to pin down on the other.
Probe regulars might remember the review of I’m Being Good’s previous album, the nail peeling Poisonous Life. Sub Plot ‘s first track ‘Angels on our Shoulders’ starts in a more confident, and damn it, coherent vein. Guitars and production sound round and behaved, and it’s only after a couple of minutes in to the track that you get the first inklings that this might be a noisy album after all. Until things quieten down again. Six minutes in, and things return to hard and nasty. At which point you realise it’s been six minutes; at least two more than is acceptable in the primordial principles of pop. And yet, it doesn’t seem that long. In a clever, confident move, I’m Being Good hold the interest long after it should have wilted away. Things carry on in this beguiling way. ‘Kill him With War Savings’ is a riffier, brasher animal, which flops into old school hardcore, yet still sounding interesting throughout.
Some of the tuning is still odd—but not as odd as Poisonous Life—and the Truman’s Water desperate ranting has been toned down. ‘Joust’ and ‘He has Unborn Eyes on Long Tinsel Stalks’ play the loud/quiet dynamic until it has a fit and becomes something different altogether. All in all, quite an album. It’s not a ‘YEH’ on the first few listens. It’s a real grower however; and as real growers go, it’s one of the best.
On the strength of this album, I’m Being Good should be talked about in hushed tones. In upping the professionalism—a ‘drum technician’ was called in—and messing with loopy structures and odd bluish Muji/alienartwork, struggly indie art noise is given a new twist. ‘Solar System of Blood [for Ringo]’, the last song on the album, sums this up. It’s about four minutes before anything happens, and yet in all that ‘nothing happening’, there’s almost too much going on. Then there’s about another seven and a half minutes, after a slight change, when nothing happens in a slightly different key and tempo. My guess is that Andrew Clare and his cronies will never be household names. Still, if you want weird with a sniff of fresh and scary, this is a wise purchase. Jazz, really, that’s assuredly and playfully revered and massacred in fine noise-nick tradition.
Only two questions remain. Is the reference to Ringo a swipe, and if so, can the argument as to whether he was great or rubbish be finally sorted in a deserted warehouse, please?—and did I’m Being Good’s “mattress suspension consultant” really add to their sound?

'Poisonous Life'

Jack Sargeant (Fringecore Magazine)
I’m Being Good have been playing in various forms for nigh on six years now and their guitar oriented quasi-improv blather has reached absurdly great heights. Hearing a new CD or watching them play live has become one of the few genuine highlights of the ‘postrock’—or whatever it’s called this week—calendar. The eleven pieces presented here capture the band at a new high, as they roll tunes into spit balls and fire them across a shifting rhythmic structure with the casual abandon that only the truly talented can muster. The fact that these guys aren’t world famous is a testament to the genuine clarity of their vision.

'Trumans Water /
I'm Being Good'

Live Reviews

'The Spitz', London, 01/06/02. - Dee Arr (Disorder Online)
Bands like Brighton’s I’m Being Good are the very reason that guitar tunings can be changed. A three-piece with a couple of cleverly modified guitar-cum-basses, IBG play math rock for people who can’t count; odd timings, random stops and dynamic whisper-shouting is order of the evening at a gloriously art-wank BigSmoke night.
Guitarist Jussi Brightmore comes across as Jamiroquai possessed by the soul of Krist Novoselic, leaping around and pulling fluid, effortless Rock poses. Mind you, Jay Kay says he doesn’t like to buy records, while these guys have clearly got a pretty wide collection. There’s probably quite a lot of Sebadoh in it; frontman Andrew Clare, himself a spit of Lou Barlow, may have even swallowed one of their earlier rekkids.
Indeed, long-jumper-music is so integral to their sound that drummer David Ewan Campbell even uses one to play his snare at one point. But whereas music this Lo-fi is usually such a mess because the band can’t be arsed with an inconvenience like learning to play their instruments, IBG are all exceptional musicians. Complex guitar/bass combo riffs tear the venue apart while Clare swings from quiet introspection to terrifying screams.
As the set draws to a close Campbell wanders around his kit, carefully lying pieces on the floor and banging out a quick rhythm before moving onto the next bit. Actually, the sight of the dismantled kit is the first indication in the whole set that a song is ending, what with all those delicious false stops. It’s music to make you think, sure, but it’s also music to make you wanna dance about a bit and go grrr.
Being good has never felt so, um, good.