Broadcast Albums (3)
What The Critics Say
Reflecting their newly streamlined status as a duo, Broadcast's Tender Buttons strips their luminous electronic pop down to its barest essence. Initially, the album is a shock, and not always a pleasant one; many Broadcast fans have come to expect each release as a chance to be blown away by the group's ever-bigger and better sounds, and from their early EPs to the ornate Haha Sound, Broadcast seemed to challenge themselves by adding more layers and twists and turns to their music. Here, Trish Keenan and James Cargill push themselves to do more with much less. The pruning ends up being prudent; concentrating on just a few musical motifs, Tender Buttons has a uniquely fresh, modern feel. Sparingly applied beats, intricate but subtle guitars, and hazy synths dominate the album, providing a restrained backdrop for Keenan's quietly commanding voice and crossword-puzzle lyrics. As if to underscore Broadcast's new aesthetic, Tender Buttons opens with some of its most radical departures: "I Found the F"'s largely spoken vocals and driving bassline, "Black Cat"'s austere pulse, and the title track's whispery, sinister sensuality all stretch (or rather, shrink) the boundaries of what a Broadcast song can be. At first, these tracks just sound unfinished, but the beauty of their bareness reveals itself eventually. Not all of Tender Buttons is this naked. The single "America's Boy" (which somehow manages to play into and dismiss the mythic American soldier at the same time) and "Arc of a Journey"'s stargazing are a little more fleshed out, nodding to the full, swirling sound of Broadcast's earlier work without rehashing it. Likewise, "Michael a Grammar" and "Goodbye Girls" offer a more colorful, charming spin on the band's new approach. Still, Tender Buttons' most restrained moments are often most striking: "You and Me in Time" plays like a delicately surreal update of Julee Cruise's spacy torch-pop, while the absolutely stunning vignette "Tears in the Typing Pool" makes the most of an acoustic guitar and Keenan's gorgeous vocals and evocative songwriting skills. Oddly enough, Tender Buttons' simplicity makes it more demanding than Broadcast's other work; it requires more than just a few listens to sink in. However, the tension between Broadcast's catchy and aloof, experimental sides is what makes their music intriguing, and Tender Buttons is no different in that regard: even when it seems to be stripped bare, it's still full of mystery. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
On their early singles and brilliant debut album, The Noise Made by People, Broadcast's commitment to crafting meticulously, ethereally beautiful atmospheres gave their music a detached quality that made them somewhat difficult to embrace fully. This isn't the case on Haha Sound, the band's second album. While their music still sounds like it could've been crafted by ghosts in the machine, now Broadcast give it flesh and blood through more warmth and texture. As with the Pendulum EP, Haha Sound's more human touch comes through in its looser, more intimate, and rougher sound. But aside from being warmer and more textured, the album is simply more, as its first three songs reveal. The delicately spooky nursery rhyme "Colour Me In" begins the album with the wistful, childlike viewpoint that creeps into Haha Sound from time to time, its layers of chopped up, sawing strings giving it an oddly and sweetly tentative feel. "Pendulum" finds the band digging deeper into their psychedelic influences, with acid rock drumming and flashback-like washes of sound making it one of the most tense, driving tracks they've recorded. The Pendulum EP suggested that the entire album might be as wired and dissonant as this song, but tracks like "Before We Begin" quickly prove otherwise. A superstitious song about reuniting lovers, it's gorgeous pop in the vein of "The Book Lovers" and "Come On Let's Go," but more approachable and that much more alluring because of it. The rest of Haha Sound more or less follows in the footsteps of these songs, but the variety that the band instills in the album makes it far from monotonous. A big part of Haha Sound's expansive feel is Trish Keenan's increasingly expressive vocals; while she can still occasionally seem to be hovering slightly outside the songs, her delivery is much more vulnerable and emotive. She's soothing on "Valerie," which is Broadcast's idea of a folk song or lullaby -- although with all of its eerie background noises, sleeping with one eye open is suggested -- ecstatic on "Minim," and poignant on "The Little Bell," another sweetly childlike song that sounds like Keenan is singing inside a broken clock. Noisier aspects find their way into interludes like "Distortion" and "Black Umbrellas," a curious, fuzzy oompah that picks up speed like an out-of-control assembly line. "Man Is Not a Bird" concludes with a playful, Raymond Scott-esque percussive exercise. The spirits of Scott and Joe Meek haunt the album's carefully deconstructed sound, most obviously on its more extreme tracks, but even on gentler songs like the flight of fancy "Lunch Hour Pops," which has a giddy, space-age sweetness akin to the Tornadoes' "Telstar." This song, the beautiful "Ominous Cloud," and "Winter Now" suggest that Broadcast could probably make dozens of immaculate pop songs like these if they wanted to, but all the detours the band takes are precisely what make the more perfectly crafted songs so precious. Haha Sound may not be Broadcast's most superficially perfect album, but it's a more challenging and exciting one because of its deliberate imperfections. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'The Noise Made by People'
Release Date 3/20/2000
Tracks 12
Label Warp
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
After being mired in the studio for nearly three years, Broadcast returned with their first proper full-length album, The Noise Made by People, a collection of more shimmering, weightless pop that is nostalgic for yesterday's visions of the future but remains on the cutting edge of contemporary music. Where their early singles (collected on 1997's Work and Non-Work) painted small, quaint portraits of their retro-futurism, The Noise Made by People delivers their sound in widescreen, filmic grandeur. Richly layered yet airy pieces like the album bookends, "Long Was the Year" and "Dead the Long Year," seamlessly blend symphonic, electronic, and pop elements into smoky, evocative epics, while synth-based interludes such as "Minus One" and "The Tower of Our Tuning" present Broadcast's more detached, scientific side. Likewise, Trish Keenan's air-conditioned vocals sometime suggest a robotized Sandie Shaw or Cilla Black, but her humanity peeks out on "Come on Let's Go" and "Papercuts." "Echo's Answer" and "Until Then" are two of the other highlights from the album, which despite all of its chilly unearthliness, is a noise made by (very talented) people. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
