The Tidal Wave of Indifference

Album of the Week: Broken Records – Let Me Come Home

Building a band up to be the next big thing before knocking them down mere months later is a music journalism cliché but it still happens rather a lot.

More often than not it’s down to over-excitable hacks having to hastily backtrack when they realise the acts they’ve bigged up are in fact utter toss, but there are less deserving casualties.

Take Edinburgh’s Broken Records, for example. The toast of Auld Reekie’s music scene, a festival fixture and with numerous publications, including the NME queuing up to heap praise on them in 2007-2008.

But when their debut album was released in early ’09 it was shat upon from a great height, with a particularly harsh review in The Skinny almost causing a local rammy.

Now I liked the album, but have to admit it wasn’t everything I’d hoped it would be. This was probably down to a sense of over-familiarity with the songs, overly fussy production tempering the bluster of their live shows and perhaps an eventual realisation that on top of five or six great songs there was a wodge of filler.

That said, I felt they had been harshly treated and am pleased to see that they’re back with a new album, radio airplay and some glowing reviews of Let Me Come Home, and I’m about to add to that growing pile.

Let Me Come Home has been described as a rockier album than Until the Earth Begins to Part but I have to disagree – if anything, it’s more measured in its approach. The loose cannon energy of older numbers A Good Reason and If the News Makes You Sad Don’t Watch was breathtaking. But the pacier numbers here – A Darkness Rises Up and You Know You’re Not Dead are kept on a firm leash and don’t quite hit the ‘ceilidh at the gates of Hell’* feel of previous work.

It’s not that they’re holding anything back, however. I’m sensing a more mature approach to their songwriting, the band having been wounded by previous injustices and now happier to just be themselves, rather than try to live up to their fast and furious folk band persona.

A Leaving Song is the perfect opener – reflective of lyric, and gently paced but with an undercurrent of pounding drums. Jamie Sutherland demonstrates his range of powerful vocals through the album and finds the perfect foil in Sparrow and the Workshop’s Jill O’Sullivan on the haunting Dia Dos Namorados (Day of the Enamoured if you don’t speak Spanish).

Perhaps the ‘rockier’ description comes from guitars being higher up in the mix, thanks to Tony Doogan’s production, no surprise when you spot Mogwai on his CV, but there are no walls of noise here. Songs like The Motorcycle Boy Reigns and Ailene demonstrate that emotive indie rock doesn’t have to be insipid dross like some of the wet blanket bands that have been propelled to wider success. 

It’s stirring stuff all the way through. Subtle flecks of cello, violin and piano show that their rootsy, ahem, roots have not been forgotten either.

Broken Records have shown on Let Me Come Home that all that early hype was not without justification and that the band have a bright future.

Jamie Sutherland was happy to answer a few questions about the album and didn’t shy away from talking about their previous troubles…

Many of the songs on the first album had clearly been kicking about for a few years – how did it feel to start afresh with a new batch of tunes?
 
It’s always exciting to have a new batch of songs, as certainly after two years of touring the songs off the last album, it was starting to feel as if we were going through the motions a little. I think we are all really excited about getting out and playing these songs to people, and the new directions we can take the live set.

Until the Earth Begins to Part was unfairly maligned in some publications. Do you feel you have something to prove?
 
I think we were all a little stung by some of the criticism that came our way from the first album. I think this happened for a variety of reasons, but mainly through bad timing. We had some contractual wranglings before we signed to 4AD, and this slowed up bringing out the record for about six months, by which time people were looking to different bands such as Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, which we didn’t really fit into. I can certainly see some flaws in the first record, but in my opinion, I still feel it was a really good first record to bring out, and I’ll always be proud of it. I don’t feel we have anything to prove, as critics and the public will always have their own agenda on how they perceive a record, so I think you just have to put your head down and work, and with a little luck people will like it!

There’s obviously been some changes in personnel. Were Arne (Kolb – cello) and David (Fothergill – bass) involved with the new album? Does the line-up feel pretty settled now?

We recorded the album as the original seven piece, as we didn’t know Arne was leaving at the time, and Gill was still serving his extended notice (I think it was nine months!). Particularily the bass on the new record sounds fantastic, so it was always going to be tough to replace the guys. I think the thing we have always been is friends foremost and band second, so to look to my left onstage and not see Gill and Arne for the first time in four years was a strange thing, but we are lucky enough to have another good mate fill their boots in Craig, who brings a host of other stuff to the band. I think we are now pretty settled, but at some point down the line I would like to expand again. I’ve always loved big bands, and making a lot of noise, so we’ll see. Depends if we can afford anyone else!

There’s certainly a different feel to the album – was there a particular pervading influence during the recording process?

I think when I listen to the first record, the thing it is missing is the rock band element of the live show. We certainly have always meant to be a loud proposition, and certainly when we are labeled as folk it causes some gritted teeth, as I personally don’t see it, so I think the overriding feeling doing the second record was to readjust perceptions of us. As our manager put it, “turning down the orchestra a little and turning up the guitar!”

The album is out now on 4AD and single A Darkness Rises Up is all over 6 Music.

*Not sure where this quote came from – possibly the NME – but it was particularly apt.