Broken Bells is a band consisting of James Mercer from the band The Shins, and producer and multi-instrumentalist Brian Burton, who is mostly known to the music scene as Danger Mouse. Broken Bells is their self titled debut album that was released on March 9, 2010 and it has been considered by many to be a candidate of being album of the year.
I didn’t think much of it.
One redeeming factor that I did like is that it is a very consistent LP in terms of song writing and playing, it shows that Broken Bells have found a sound that they themselves enjoy using and will want to continue using it until they’ve wrung it dead. Rather than trying out different methods of music in every song, which I think many new artists do in their debut albums.
However, this is also where I find the consistency to become ultimately the demise of the likeability factor of this LP for me. It proves to be very restricting as Broken Bells really do not stray too far out of the comfort zone that their easily replicated sound has with it, none of the songs on the LP sound different from one another, there are no slight subtle changes added halfway through the songs, everything just remains the same throughout.
The tempo also seems to follow the same pattern, there are no moments that make me fill up to the brink with adrenaline and end up punching a cat, or parts where the LP makes me take a step back and begin to take in the lyrics, the vocals, the riffs, anything. The album seems to just be walking at a normal pace, to the shops to buy some boring potatoes, only to walk back to their badge house in the same boring, normal walking pace.
Finally, I feel as if there’s no true depth or emotion underlying within the foundations of this LP. It sounds as if Broken Bells have thrown together the long, dwindling vocals in the background while two people unify together to create one connected harmony for the “sake of it”, rather than Broken Bells themselves actually being full of depth and emotion inside their bodies.
Overall:
I feel that Broken Bells is really an LP that doesn’t make any ground shake or get any of my hormones imbalanced. I don’t really see why this LP is considered one of the best albums of 2010, it doesn’t really have any unique or redeeming factors to it, and for that reason I think that Broken Bells deserves a 4/10.
