Broadcast: Tender buttons

All songs on Tender buttons (2005) evoke the feeling that something bad is about to happen. Soon. The record conjures up the state of waiting; foreboding; dry anxiety. Even when Trish Keenan sings about dancing you know something awful has happened. "My feet are dancing so much and I hate that." David Bowie? Indie-Schmindie? Maybe, but, really, Keenan sounds as if something terrible is lurking around the corner & the song revolves around this weird synth pattern. A guitar riff brings some weight to the sound & contribute to a certain "thickness" that dominates the other songs as well - which sits perfectly with the minimal, somewhat gritty, arrangements. "Michael Michael Michael / Come on your father was a teddy boy" Keenan drones on "Micheal A Grammar".

Most songs are built around two or three instruments. A bass line, a few snaring beats of a drum machine along with a crunchy synth churning out sounds both lovely and brutal. On one or two songs, kraut-y guitars tag along. Lazy vibraphones! Keenan's vocals, however, always remain the backbone, even when she is doing spoken parts. Suicide might be a point of reference, the combination of sweet & gruesome, raw and blissful; listen to "America's boy" and maybe you'll agree with me. "Quaker toil, texas oil". Indeed, what a rhyme. It would be an exaggeration to call Broadcast an experimental band, even though they are interested in experimental music. They play around with sounds and minimalist combinations of instruments (cf. Young marble giants), that's all, but Tender buttons has an indubitable pop sensibility and melodies that are easy to make out.

Lyrics? Well, some of them, most of them, are strange, elliptic and border on the surreal. But lyrically, there is also some weaker material. It is the voice & the synth that makes this a perfect album. Trish Keenan's plaintive, yet neutral wording is peculiar - it's different. (The reviewer at Pitchfork calls her voice frigid - have you EVER heard anyone say that of a man's voice? Women, of course, are suppose to chirp and coo. Maybe the Pitchfork critic finds the word "anatomy" too illicit to be sung by a woman? Would he talk about castrated voices?) Surprisingly, there are times when Keenan sounds like Ian Curtis but you might not believe it at first but she does: the ghostliness, the hollow, is there. Here, however, a strange warmth seeps in when you least expect it to, and that is one of the reasons why I find this album so exciting. Not only does Keenan remind me of Ian Curtis, her vocals have the elegance of a 60's diva or perhaps the iciness of some of Nico's stuff.

"Arc of a journey" showcases a dreamy mix of synth & vibraphones. The result is stunning. A slow song about .... eh machinic memory or something. "The axis of feeling". The dissonant "You and me in time" is another highlight. The jarring soundscape of the song is a perfect contrast to the wistful lyrics. As many have pointed out, this could, with a different synth line, be a Julee Cruise song. "I found the F" bristles with live drumming plus the inescapable jarring synth. Keenan picks up a girl group sound that only adds to the spook-factor.

And, damn, I like the fact that the title refers to a book by Gertrude Stein. I like Gertrude Stein. Her texts are elliptic, too, and enigmatic, just as this album, which starts with a song called "I found the F" and ends with "I found the end"!