Peter Broderick - Colours of the Night '2015

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. Red Earth
02. The Reconnection
03. Colours of the Night
04. Get on With Your Life
05. If I Sinned
06. Our Best
07. One Way
08. On Time
09. More and More
10. Rotebode


The product of an unlikely collaboration between an Oregon singer-songwriter and
a small group of Swiss musicians, recorded in a studio more usually associated
with Alpine hip-hop, Colours of the Night is a beguiling and yet joyously
engaging set that brings the best out in Peter Broderick’s voice and
takes him far beyond his established musical milieu. It’s a brave
departure for him, a shift away from the studied arrangements of many previous
albums towards a greater sense of spontaneity and a (thoroughly justified) trust
in his accompanists.

The title track, with its stylistic echoes of the world of Paul Simon’s
Graceland, is exuberant and is followed by a winning rendition of Stina
Nordenstam’s Get On With Your Life. Throughout the album, Broderick
conveys the sense that he has a confidence in his songs to the extent that a
hitherto unknown (to him) band can bring out their quality. It’s a risk,
of course, but the rewards are at times startling.

The opener, Red Earth builds slowly from delicate guitar and fragile harmonies
to a fullness of sound that establishes a coherence subsequently sustained
across the album. From here to a doo-wop composition, The Reconnection, sounds
an unorthodox journey but Broderick makes it by recognising that his own and the
band’s rhythmic phrasing have a natural affinity. It’s as if
Broderick’s famed meticulousness, so much in evidence in, for instance,
his work with Nils Frahm on 2011’s Oliveray album Wonders is here
transposed into a greater sense of self-confidence, allowing freer exploration
than on many albums hitherto. Even the multi-tracked a cappella If I Sinned has
Broderick in new (for him) territory that arouses no fears and should, one
hopes, lay to rest his anxieties brought on by over-concern with translating
studio productions into live performance. A song like Our Best, with its rich
horns and beautiful female harmonies develops with just the right subtle shifts
in pace, and is surely one of the finest things he has ever done.

It’s a diverse and ambitious album that could, in lesser hands, have been
so much less than the sum of its parts. That so much carries conviction, from
the Afro-beat of One Way to the changing rhythms and almost industrial echo of
On Time, is testimony to Broderick’s talent as a writer and to the
generous and sympathetic work of the Lucerne musicians who help bring his ideas
to majestic realisation.

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