Aphera Music

…And who? the Broken Bells!

Last weekend, a couple my friends and I went to Lancaster, PA to see a show at the Chameleon. The headliner was Man Man. Who or what is Man Man, you might ask? In the words of my friend Tyler, “They’re… um… life changing. You have to hear them to understand.” Prepare for your life to be changed (apologies for the quality):

That’s “Hurly Burly,” the second track of Rabbit Habbits (2008). It might take a bit to process that, so I’ll let you replay it a few more times.

Okay, now that you’ve digested that, you can begin to understand that which still has me in shock and awe. I’d like to call this “circus rock” – the carnival-esque dissonance of circus music combined with the energy of rock music. Truly, this is insanity. Now imagine all of these instruments actually being played live, in front of a crazy club crowd as mad as the band. My response was simply: Wow. My jaw is still hanging loose! Needless to say, I stopped by the merch table and picked up a copy of Rabbit Habbits, and have listened to it all the way through three times in the past two days.

Cover to the Broken Bells "High Road" single. Their artwork is weird (George thinks).

As you can tell by the latest blog posts, Gorillaz have been up to something big, with their latest album Plastic Beach taking the world (or at least this blog!) by storm. However, overshadowed by that (and yet still worth some recognition) is Broken Bells’ self-titled debut. Broken Bells is the collaboration of Danger Mouse (think Gnarls Barkley) and the Shins front man James Mercer and acts as a sort of fusion of the two. As Rick says in Casablanca, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” the same seems true here. However, keep in mind that this is the beginning. A few things still need to be worked out.

“The High Road,” being the first single off of the album, is obviously fairly catchy – it provides a nifty drum beat couple with guitar reminiscent of Oasis’ “Wonderwall,” yet melodically is totally different (and seriously, much better). Still, it’s a pretty standard single; nothing is terribly innovative or experimental about it, but it is very catchy and an interesting combination of artists.

Highlights for me were “Your Head is on Fire,” which sounds sort of like Fleet Foxes meets the Shins, and “The Ghost Inside,” a more electronic song that ends up being very dance-able. “October” sounds like a younger brother (admittedly a cooler younger brother) to “The High Road,” which was already pretty cool to begin with. If I could have picked the single, it probably would have been one of these three.

Despite all this awesomeness, a constant problem pervades the album: the lack of drum presence. George has noted, forever cursing anything I listen to by Danger Mouse (and now forever cursing you as well), that all of Brian Burton’s drum beats are flat. This is true even here, with the exception on the album (aside from the songs lacking drums) being “Mongrel Heart,” which brings the electronic and Westerns (yes the film genre) together. Even so, the soulless drums can be relatively ignored, and the album has definitely more than piqued my interest.

Verdict: very poppy, worth listening to, but don’t go out and spend $30 on a vinyl; the CD should do if you need to buy it.

Tom Roher is an excellent friend of the Aphera Team, specifically George though I don’t think Larissa has anything against him.