Broadcast : Tender Buttons

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Broadcast have made a career out of never repeating themselves. The sound of Haha Sound aimed for bigger and stranger destinations that of its predecessor, The Noise Made by People. And that album blew the doors open on the insular, lo-fi lounge-pop world of the singles collected on Work and Non Work. Broadcast is a band in perpetual flux, evolving and expanding with each new release, never allowing themselves to ever be too comfortable in one solitary sphere; something is always changing.

That constant change is what keeps the band’s music such a consistently joyful experience. As members come and go, so do sounds and ideas. As a five-piece, they made fascinatingly unusual space pop. As a trio, they brought krautrock pulse and Floyd-ian scope to ambient pop. And, narrowed to the duo of James Cargill and Trish Keenan, Broadcast reinvent themselves yet again in the form of an unnervingly sensual and discordant electronic outfit, one whose songs are simultaneously more abrasive and more tender (hey!) than the oddly wonderful tunes on Haha Sound. And as such, they’ve managed to renew their status as the UK’s most inventive and innovative band.

Despite the constant change, there are definitely elements of Tender Buttons that are identifiably “Broadcast,” for one, Trish Keenan’s voice. Keenan has always hovered in that space between gentle chanteuse and detached apparition, never overly showy or dramatic with her voice, emitting a lovely and graceful sound all the same. Her song can feel at times cold and distant, but inviting. The other part of the equation that remains in tact is James Cargill’s peculiar soundscapes. Though the effects have changed and the enormous drums have been replaced by simpler programmed beats, there is still an element of the space age pop that has always been there. Broadcast may have evolved into different shapes and colors over the years, but for reasons that nobody can say for sure, you always know when you hear them.

Making a conscious effort to bridge the gap between Haha Sound and Tender Buttons, the album begins with “I Found the F,” the only song on the album with live drums. Under Keenan’s ghostly coo, ascending guitar and descending synth samples criss-cross and zig-zag, creating a swirling spiral staircase of sound and a sublime, haunting two-minute pop song with simple, yet carefully placed ingredients. The significantly more synthetic and sinister sounding “Black Cat” follows, Keenan’s chorus of “Black cat/black cat/curiouser and curiouser” floating over spectral, ambient waves. The title track is subtler in approach, using droning synth textures a la early Stereolab.

The album’s first single, “America’s Boy,” quickly reveals itself to be among the band’s best singles, as well as one of their best songs overall. Buzzing bass synth and melodic prisms of feedback create a magnificent wall of sound on one of the year’s most unlikely dance hits (it’s not one yet, but certainly I can’t be the only one who thought of it). Keenan sings in simple prose of the American soldier, completely devoid of bias or politics, in a lyric that was supposedly inspired by a crossword puzzle. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the song that follows, “Tears in the Typing Pool,” a sparse and slow acoustic song, the likes of which are apparent, yet not frequent in Broadcast’s output over the years. The subdued noise-surf of “Corporeal” is a delight for the senses, particularly Keenan’s delivery during the chorus: “do that to me/do that to my anatomy.” It’s not as carnal as, say, “Milkshake,” but it does the trick.

Motorik grooves abound on “Bit 35,” a robotic lounge ballad arrives in the form of “Arc of a Journey,” and childlike melodic chants drive “Michael A Grammar,” while “Subject to the Ladder” approximates Kraftwerk colliding with Joy Division. It’s nearly impossible to predict Broadcast’s melodic path at any given time, but hearing just how much they’ll re-conceptualize their sound is far more exciting than the image we might conjure in our own minds. A Broadcast album never arrives exactly how you anticipate it; they’re far too interesting a band for that.


Label: Warp

Year: 2005

Buy this album at Turntable Lab


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