Broken Bells

Add Date: March 9

Artist: Broken Bells

Album: Broken Bells

Label: Columbia

Genre: Pop

Comments: From the label:

"James Mercer (of The Shins) and Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse, aka half of Gnarls Barkley and producer of Gorillaz Demon Days and Beck's Modern Guilt) have completed work on the first album by their new and ongoing band, Broken Bells. ... The album features ten melodically seductive and psychologically provocative songs. Here's how Rolling Stone's Will Hermes described it:

"It turns out that two pop-science geeks are a perfect match. Danger Mouse pushes Mercer's gorgeous, existential tunecraft outward with Day-Glo dynamics. ...[W]hat sweeps you up are the sweet, ascending verses, the rolling choruses and the Danger Mouse touches: analog-synth swirls, slo-mo kick drums, a melancholy bass line-- hip hop for turned-on shut-ins. 'Vaporize' begins with Mercer's fey workaday voice and a strummed acoustic, then takes off with smeared snares, bouncy organ and a jaunty Barcharach-David-style horn break. It's punchier than the Shins, and livelier than you'd expect from a song whose title suggests innovative marijuana consumption-- an anthem for malcontents, teenage and otherwise, not unlike 'Crazy.' In Danger Mouse, Mercer has found a promising fellow traveler."

Super enjoyable pop with a psychedelic/groove vibe. The Shins chilled out and taken down an octave and made oh so so much cooler in a totally un-Garden State way. For fans of the Shins, Beck, Gorillaz, and Department of Eagles.

You've got to try "The Ghost Inside" or "The Mall & Misery."

Team Clermont