Broken Bells - Broken Bells

4/5 Cocks

Broken Bells, on the face of it, is anything but remarkable. The singer-songwriter/Danger Mouse team-up format has born such fruit as the psychedelic soul-pop of Gnarls Barkley to the transcontinental orgy of singer-songwriters and Danger Mouse that was Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of The Soul, it's been an undeniably successful formula, or at the very least a fun one. On Broken Bells, it's Danger Mouse and James Mercer of the Shins teaming up this time.

The first thing you'll notice, from the opening notes of The High Road, is that it's a very pretty album, something that could go very wrong in the hands of less-talented musicians. But it's not empty prettiness, an affliction which affects a lot of indie pop/rock. Apart from Citizen, which slops into a spineless mess, from start to finish the prettiness has something going for it that isn't just, well, prettiness. And Mongrel Heart and The Mall & Misery, the two closing tracks, kind of rock, actually.

-K