Labels: Fan Death Records
Review by: Andy Malcolm
A number of months ago, I was rather taken with the LP by the band Sisters. It now turns out that two folk from Sisters are plying their trade in Broken Water, who had an LP out earlier this year. I had missed this event, and was not aware of Broken Water’s existence until this seven. For shame! On here we open up with “Normal Never Happened”, which is a lot cleaner than anything on that Sisters LP. It heads down a pleasingly stark, dreampop avenue, with the focus of the song for me the wandering bassline that never quite takes centre stage but certainly hogs the direction. Over that you have harmonised female vocals hovering as an extra instrument of sorts, as they never break out of the cloud to become clearly audible and allow you to make out lyrics. It’s a very persistent and repetitious effort, only momentarily veering from the set path with some outbreaks of clanging guitars towards the end. I like it. On the flip you get “Faux King Vogue” which is perhaps more in line with what I would have expected this band to sound like given their history. This is classic Pacific north-west indie rock, leaning on guitar crunch and that kind of noisy punch you’ll find on Lync and Unwound records. It rumbles on to a messy conclusion.
These two tracks make for a good introduction to the band, but I think that the nature of this kind of music breaths a lot better over the course of a full length, which I have now of course ordered to rectify my ignorance. Hurrah.