Album Absorption 009: Broken Bells

I was in the middle of different musical headspace when I remembered that Danger Mouse had a new project that had just come out. Broken Bells (Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the Shins) dropped their new album in March and I had originally ignored it. I was looking for some kind of something else entirely when I first listened to it, so I dismissed it at first.

Broken Bells - The High Road (2010); this track combines some of the bleepy techno with almost a classic rock vocal line. Then it goes to a more modern indie place and evens out, but that original incongruence is nice.


Broken Bells - The Ghost Inside (2010); listening to this is like the cold hand of my decade-ago self reaching out from the past to clammily touch my face. If this were a late-nineties/early-aughts transitional fossil, I would be less confused. But it's not because it sounds like I've heard it before. Its sounds just fall in a weird place in the nostalgia spectrum. Old ghosts I haven't made peace with yet.


Broken Bells - Vaporize (2010); I find this track basically inoffensive. I think the rest of the album is nice for having on in the background but not necessarily something I can really sink teeth and claws into.


I'll be poking at it more, see if anything else interesting is in there.