Broadcast - 'Tender Buttons' (Warp)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
It's to our benefit that there's been a lot to dwell on in Broadcast records. The music's curiously quirky, the delivery seductively vacant, but the one thing you'd be justified in taking from a session in their presence above anything else would be the rested feeling generated by that majestically luscious melody grounding all the experiments that happen around it, the woozy, beautiful calm that has seemed to cuddle every idea they've let loose so far.
In that respect, 'Tender Buttons' marks a departure, if only in the sense that although those melodies do still exist commonly, they now tickle your ears rather than stroke them. It shares a lot in common with its predecessor, the sumptuous 'Ha Ha Sound', but seeing as what would on that record have been treated as pretty, almost ghostly little ditties have been affected by a bizarre, difficult coat of ever present fuzz, at times it feels like you're attempting to tune in to the previous record on an analogue radio, but for some reason you can't quite get the dial to rest properly on the station.
But radio-fuzz can be worthwhile, too. Even though it feels like there's something wrong with your dial, the music you're so close to being perfectly in tune with obviously is so enticing that even to hear it played in such a peculiar manner has its own special set of inherent delights. 'Tender Buttons', as they hint with the manner in which it's been christened, is an attempt to make electronica cry, subsuming the human within the machine but without losing the capacity for experiencing beauty or emotion.
Being different for difference's sake? At times, perhaps - the title track is an attempt to rescue a limp tune with a great concept for a title, the epic 'Arc of a Journey' is a lacklustre ramble which takes the concept of the truly emotive machine a little too far ("Can I see more than I'm programmed to be?") and the closing 'I Found the End' just sounds like a second hand keyboard practicing scales to itself whilst its batteries run out. They're a trio of mechanical misdemeanour. Other than them, it's a ruddy-bloody pop classic.
BUT - with beeping bits! Here's the important part that makes you think Broadcast aren't stuck playing with computers just because they don't know how to play guitars properly - in the hands of the less forward thinking, some of the brighter parts of the LP wouldn't be strong enough tunes to hold much attention, the simplicity would be their downfall rather than their grace, and all that's intriguing would instead be tediously pacifying. Present it clad in a cold, prickly, metallic veneer and suddenly it's a different story. Strong? These songs are positively burly, mate.
Cases in point: 'America's Boy', 'The Black Cat', 'Corporeal' - they all sound like earache, but feel like sunshine. Bits of it are somehow quite genuinely sad too, an aching 'Subject to a Ladder' and 'Tears in to the Typing Pool' are the only moments where you briefly manage to get the dial to rest fully on the station and experience some clear, saddened pining before the signal is lost and the madness continues. 'Michael A Grammar' arrives out of the whole process as the winner however, not only the best tune but (as is of utmost importance to this bunch) the best use of a tune, it's as infectious as the computer virus that probably contributed to its making.
At its end, it could well make you deliberately aim your wireless towards the abyss, hoping you pick up on something else that sounds as deliriously, deliciously mangled as these mistreated pop songs. If such a sound is ever found, you're hereby implored to divulge the frequency to us - perhaps Broadcast have shown us a way to make pop radio interesting after all.
Artists in this article: Broadcast
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