Labels: Adagio830
Review by: MH
A double LP surfaces in the review pile! Thanks to the label for sending this in, particularly as it’s rather good. This brings together Broken Arm’s “Wrought” LP alongside some earlier tracks from 2012 and before. The first record is “Wrought” then and their most recent recordings. It’s a highly varied record – shoegaze may well be the obvious genre you’d try and plonk this in but you can throw in a load of others in too – there are hints of post punk, and dreamy, hazy noise too. Many of the songs may be slow but the rhythm section crashes and pounds its way through alongside a heftier guitar crunch. The opener “High-lo” is a wonderful slice of melodic shoegaze led by Kanako’s haunting vocals that rattles along with an almost jangly guitar sound before the chorus where it crashes into dissonance whereas “Wasted” sees John on vocals and it’s an urgent, noisy track that kicks like Unwound. “Choice” is layered with swirling distortion and features haunting vocals as well as talky ones before the latter part of the track bursts into a blistering, noisy ending. They are equally comfortable with the urgent, noisier side as they are in a more subdued style as on the likes of “Psycho Static”. These are just some of the highlights for me but it’s an excellent record and is closed out with a building, brooding track over 12 minutes long.
The other record features tracks which date from between 2009 and 2012. Listening to these songs today they still sound fresh and are the kind of warped and murky shoegaze I can get behind. “Faux King Vogue” is very Sonic Youth and features some thunderous riffing. You might want to get comfortable for “Seaside” which takes a whole side of the second record and is almost 17 sprawling minutes of instrumental. Broken Water are a great band.