Caught by the bell!

James Mercer from The Shines and producer Danger Mouse are releasing this year, as Broken Bells, their self titled debut album. So what does the outcome sound like? By putting together the voice on New Slang and the producer of (lets choose among many) Gorrilaz’ Demon Days and half of that overrated and overstuffed duo that introduced the hit single Crazy (awful combination of sounds, just awful), you get a polite album.

Short and simply saying it, the album is a chill-out one, smart experimental work with a mellow garnish represented by the voice, something like Your Head Is On Fire. Something of a sound pattern is to be recognized into each song linking them all as an album. And if on some tracks the instrumental is the one that shines, on other songs the instrumental simply supports Mercer’s voice. That matter of fact is a downside for the overall impression of these boys. In the case of other albums, both ways would have worked out fine. Whereas here as mentioned, where the instrumental shines and the voice is just an adding, that adding becomes useless (such is the case of October and Citizen). When both the instrumental and the voice come together shining, songs like The High Road, Vaporize or The Ghost Side truly are to be noted.

Only a few songs reach impressiveness or so, Sailing To Nowhere, The Ghost Inside and the first song on this album, in all matters of speaking, The High Road. That is so above it all in comparison with every other song, I tend to mark it as a lucky strike in musical working hours of Broken Bells.

Both guys try to expose their undeniable talent, whereas they succeed or not all the time to come together beautifully in a musical note, it’s irrelevant. But the issue is that they fail in choosing from their work as a band, those compositions that suit, that hold their talents and make the proper convergence.

photo courtesy of Wikipedia