Mo' Dreams, Mo' Nightmares?

Broadcast
Tender Buttons (Warp)

Recently, I've been having tons of dreams. The bed in which I'm currently sleeping has one of them dreamcatchers hanging above it. I didn't put it there. It's not even my bed. And I don't even believe in all that hogwash. But then again, why am I getting so many dreams? While most of them seem to be about the same thing, featuring the same small cast of characters, last night I dreamed that every car was an SUV, and each of them was shiny neon orange camouflage color. I woke up in a cold sweat. I didn't want to go back to sleep. These days, I rarely do. But it was 5am and I eventually drifted back into semi-consciousness.

In my re-entry, I was in ancient China, a setting I've been in before. I was riding a red dragon in the mist wearing traditional Chinese garb but with a super hi-tech visor-shielded helmet. It allowed me to zero in kinda like a stealth bomber can zero in on targets, you know, with the night vision green and numbers and the crosshairs and such. You know what I'm sayin'? The lady that haunts/brightens my dreams was there behind me, also wearing the helmet, elegant chinese attire (though she is not of Chinese dissent), and huge child-like smile. I smiled back and we kept soaring, once in a while asking the dragon, who I affectionately named Orville, to light shit on fire on our whim and to our delight. Strange, eh? More strange: it was soundtracked by Broadcast's Haha Sound.

How could that be more strange? In fact, it is indeed less strange as it's more right on. I've been trying to really get into Broadcast's psuedo third full-length release (Work and Non-Work being a collection of singles, thus the "psuedo" tag) entitled Tender Buttons. The lady of my dreams, Broadcast soundtrack, but the dragon? What gives? Well, I suppose it was because I saw tons of Dragon kites in Bodega Bay this weekend, at a store called Candy and Kites. Can I for second get off subject and just ask: is there anything more joyous and lovely than a store dedicated solely to candy and kites? Hubb and I decided that if they had kittens too, it might be slightly more sweet. Yeah, kittens and Maker's Mark. That's the ticket.

Back to the lecture at hand, Haha Sound (and all of Broadcast's catalogue, for that matter) is a foggy dream landscape of electronic experimentation and sacchrine melodies. Tender Buttons tries to replicate a similar sound with less tools. Downsized to a two piece of Trish Keenan and James Cargill, Broadcast throws familiar but less than amazing tunes in the same sonic muck of their past albums but lose a lot of elegance in their paring down.

Tender Buttons thrives on Keenan's voice and the hidden melodic gems within the grayish English electronic distortion. But after a couple listens, it dawned on me how much having a live drummer really gave the band a silver lining on their ominous clouds. It gave them a touch of class that seperated them from other noisy pop outfits. I've always adored the jazz drumming of the past albums because jazz is classy, and I want to give the impression that I associate myself with the cutting edge, the creme of society. I want to do things in a stylish yet proper manner and act like "I don't need this shit."

So, first impressions will make Tender Buttons seem like a San Diego without a Burgundy. But with an open mind and a handful of wholehearted immersing listens, Tender Buttons becomes the problem child that you want to figure out. Eventually with a little patience and a tiny bit of elbow grease, you will crack that shell and you'll find the creme filling in the Cadbury Egg. You get it? Cadbury, the English butler in the Richie Rich comics, Broadcast an English band... forget it. I don't even like the filling all that much.

It seemed frustrating to have to look so hard and fight through all the noise to find the harmonious reward. But Broadcast aren't the cold hearted uber-artistes that you want to believe they are. They give you a couple openings into their heart. "Goodbye Girls" rides a Brian Wilson inspired melody. "Michael" is tremendously catchy with blippy dance hooks pushing Keenan's usual endearing deadpan. She utters "My feet are dancing so much/And I hate that." I love it. The dancey anti-dance song. And they aren't done with the zingers. "America's Boy" would be just another biting, anti-war rant if it weren't so damn engaging: the pulsating drum machine, the eerie ghost-like choral sampling and bouncy, robotic fuzzed out bass. Gone are the slightly more comforting, dirtied space-age, bachelor-pad, spy-music, electro jazz-pop (can I get more pretenious and jumbled?), replaced by a primitively robotic dance scrap, catchy but repulsive at the same time. The one clear exception is opener "I Found the F", complete with loose and effortless drumming, Keenan's chilly vocal and that unmentionable Fifth Dimension-esque pyschedelia that somehow always gets evoked here and there.

Ironically, it's in perhaps in their least Broadcast-y moment, that they succeed the most. The utterly gorgeous ballad "Tears in the Typing Pool" features the simplest of arrangements: a gently strummed nylon string acoustic with some signature faintly distorted and delayed organ. Keenan has never been so personal with this lilting whisper, and if she has, it's always been masked and hidden like a small fonted love letter, painted over on an enormous Jackson Pollack canvas. Her lyrics are simply heartbreaking and like all things that you never want to end, it ends way too soon. "Tears in the Typing Pool" barely reaches the 2 minute mark. How am I supposed to cry if you don't give me at least 3 minutes? Fortunately, I only needed 45 seconds.

Tender Buttons is, lamely put and predictably setup, a dream. It's confusing and hazy, but once I had a handle on what's going on and poked holes in the dense shroud of enigma, I was able to control it and in logical progression, enjoy it. If "Man is Not a Bird" (off Haha Sound) made me want to fly forever, "Tears in the Typing Pool" perhaps can help me come back down to Earth and face the waking life, like I desperately need to do.

Broadcast is playing on the most seemingly most forgotten day of year, my birthday, 10/28/05 at the Great American Music Hall. Look for the small party of pointy hats and the distinctive combination smell of bundt cake and cheap beer.

Broadcast: http://www.broadcast.uk.net/