Broken Bells Find the High Road with Their Debut

In a seemingly unlikely pairing, Danger Mouse and James Mercer (of The Shins fame, of course) collaborated on “Insane Lullaby” from Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s (R.I.P. Mark Linkous) 2009 album Dark Night of the Soul. “Insane Lullaby” crafted a glitchy, effervescent soundscape full of broken beats for Mercer to sink into, with the result being one of the most striking tracks on the album. So, when Danger Mouse and Mercer announced their project, Broken Bells, and intent to release an album in 2010, fans worldwide rejoiced.

The self-titled album begins with the one-two punch of “The High Road,” its first single, and “Vaporize,” both of which feature the soaring, spacious harmonies and off-kilter, skipping beats that are prominent throughout the record.

“Vaporize” describes the discontents with resigning oneself to following society’s paths, which often requires abandoning or forgetting about earlier, “less practical” plans. Like so many other wide eyed, idealistic youth, they had “a simple plan, we’d be different from the rest/and never resign to a typical life,” but suddenly, presumably years later, “we realize we’re paralyzed/Where’d it go, all that precious time?/Did we even try to stem the tide?” As if by accident, they find themselves living a life that doesn’t resemble their earlier visions whatsoever.

And just as abruptly, Mercer sings with passionate resolve, “It’s not too late/to feel a little more alive/Make an escape/Before we start to vaporize” before ending with a sentiment every human being can identify with (“I was lost then and I am lost now/and I doubt I’ll ever know which way to go”).

The middle section of the album, unfortunately, becomes a bit stagnant, which isn’t to say that it’s bad or unenjoyable, simply not nearly as memorable as “The High Road” and “Vaporize” or later tracks, such as “October” and “The Mall and the Misery.”

Danger Mouse has an absolutely stunning tendency to bring out the very best in artists he works with, and James Mercer is no different; the finest songs on the album (“The High Road,” “Vaporize”)  exemplify this fact, making Broken Bells’ self-titled debut a spirited success, but certainly with room to grow, develop, and refine their sound before (hopefully) releasing a follow-up.—Cassie Traun, Editor

Win a Copy of Shearwater’s The Golden Archipelago!

The kind folks at Matador Records have offered to give away an LP (those are the ones that go on turntables, for the younger crowd) copy of Shearwater’s The Golden Archipelago.

What do you need to do? Just answer a simple question.

It’s well-known that lead singer Jonathan Meiburg is an ornithologist (he studies birds and in order to do so has traveled around the world, visiting the Galapagos Islands, the Chatham Islands, among other places). What species of bird did he write his master’s thesis on?

Send your answer to cassie@interference.com by Sunday, March 14th at 11:59 am. The winner will be chosen at random from the correct answers received. To win, you must be a registered member of Interference.com (registration is free!).

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As the needle rises, the speakers come alive with white-noise anticipation, and then that fateful click. Someone said once that the greatest sound in the world—the one with the most suspense, the most potential—is the sound of the needle as it hits that first groove in the record, a click that opens the door for that art which is so human, so evocative. [Read more]

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[Read more]

Shearwater’s Journey Across The Golden Archipelago

With each progressing album, Shearwater polish and perfect their sound, and The Golden Archipelago is no different. Indeed, doing all that and more, it manages to expand Shearwater’s sound to include overtly prog-influenced elements as well. Completing a trilogy of albums commenting upon man’s effect on nature, The Golden Archipelago just might be the band’s best yet. Folks, let the hype surrounding Shearwater begin.

This time focusing on islands, Jonathan Meiburg’s lyrics are vague and obtuse, offering moments of time, impressionistic slices of experiences, with a melancholy, existential twist (as seen in “Meridian,” among others: “In the boom and swell/from the waves to the heights/reverberations of our old lives”). Fortunately, Meiburg’s impossibly haunting and radiantly enthralling voice, which tends to stretch syllables to endless lengths, perfectly complements this approach by effacing the necessity for absolute meaning in the lyrics. Instead, a sublime mixture of sensuality emerges, focused on creating an aura for the listener to be subsumed into.

The album begins with a recording of “The National Anthem of Bikini Atoll,” sung by refugees from Bikini Atoll, an atoll in the Marshall Islands, rendered uninhabitable since the United States conducted twenty-three nuclear device tests on the island between 1946 and 1958.

Meiburg provides the lyrics to the ambivalently sorrowful and joyful song describing the anguish of being torn from your home, a home you cannot go back to, ever (”No longer can I stay; it’s true. No longer can I live in peace and harmony.”) on the first page of the 50 page lyric book/dossier of documents and photos accompanying The Golden Archipelago.

A portion of the song will reappear on the penultimate track on the album, “Uniforms” (”Eber im lok jiktok ikerele/kot iban bok hartu jonan an elap ippa,” which translates to “The thought is overwhelming/Rendering me helpless and in great despair”).

Always ones with an affinity for using sonics to reflect the essence of their lyrics, Shearwater narrates a visual scanning and gazing over an island on “Landscape at Speed,” (“From the slope and the rise/of the mainland/unfamiliar shapes/through the atmosphere/over rain clouds”) which then dissolves into an instrumental soundscape for the majority of the track.

Much of the “prog” influence comes from the band’s choppy, melodramatic piano lines, exemplified in “Black Eyes,” where the piano drives the entirety of the song through its fluctuating emotions of unease, disquiet, and anxiety. With “Corridors,” frenzied arpeggios take the place of the piano in “Black Eyes,” to great effect. And taking a page from the lessons of 1970s arena rock, Shearwater use abrupt changes in dynamics, moving from a whisper to crashing percussion and dissonance, to accentuate poignant moments in the songs.

At once an expression of majestic beauty and a reminder of the potentially destructive nature of mankind’s “progress,” The Golden Archipelago is Shearwater’s heartbreaking testament, challenging us to reconsider the inevitable reverberations of our actions, which reach far further than we could possibly imagine.–Cassie Traun, Editor

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