16 Mar 2010, Posted by admin in Review,Thoughts, No Comments. Tagged Review, TUNE

Broken Bells – Album Review

Broken Bells is out now for download + purchase.

I’ve been spending the day listening to Broken Bells up on Spotify, I’ve got through the album about 3 times now and I just don’t get it.

Broken Bells promised so much, a collaboration of two of insanely talented artists, James Mercer of Shins fame and Brian Burton better known as Danger Mouse. Admittedly I am a bigger fan of Danger Mouse. In fact, a HUGE fan. The creative whizz behind The Grey Album and Danger Doom, we have even featured some of his songs on our Podcasts. Claims to fame don’t get any bigger than that.

There were epic tunes promised when word first hit the street that these two titans would be working together. Both accomplished musicians in their respective fields, they promised a funky fusion of indie and trip-hop. Surely just getting these two legends into a studio together could have only produced one outcome – sadly though this collaboration is less than the sum of its parts.

I’d be inclined to believe that this could just be another example of an over hyped collaboration but these guys are just too good to have fuzzed the tracks on this one. I find myself second guessing my opinion and thinking that I’m just not ‘getting it’. Maybe I’m not or maybe there’s just nothing really to get into. Its not that any of the songs are terribly bad, just none of them are terribly good. Nothing stands up, grabs you by the earlobes and bellows down ‘Listen to me!’. For all of 37 minutes things just plod along, with a dreary rhythm reminiscent of The Coral and The Gorillaz.

In short, Broken Bells fails to chime out any classics but ‘The Ghost Inside’, ‘October’ and ‘Mongrel Heart’ will keep you smiling someone else sweeps you off your feet.

Broken Bells is just that, broken.