Bishop Allen - The Broken String '2007

Tracks list

Tracklist

01. The Monitor
02. Rain
03. Click, Click, Click, Click
04. The Chinatown Bus
05. Flight 180
06. Like Castanets
07. Butterfly Nets
08. Shrinking Violet
09. Corazon
10. Middle Management (Album Version)
11. Choose Again
12. The News from Your Bed

All that woodshedding sure paid off for Bishop Allen. The
Brooklyn-by-way-of-Boston quartet undertook an ambitious one-EP-a-month project
in 2006, self-releasing a staggering 58 songs over that time. Despite no label
or publicist and the modest arrangements of the material, the blogosphere picked
up the PR slack, eventually earning the band kudos from NPR and The Wall Street
Journal, among others. The Broken String ups the ante considerably, reworking
ten songs from the EP cycle and two new cuts into lustrous indie pop notable for
its versatility, clever lyrics, and offbeat instrumentation. The songs suggest a
host of touchstones, from the orchestral drama of a scaled-back Arcade Fire and
can't-miss hooks of the Shins to Stephin Merritt-like wordplay and narrative
flights à la the Decemberists. Songwriters Justin Rice and Christian Rudder
may not quite scale those heights, but in the hybrid they've come up with
something nearly as intoxicating. "Monitor" opens the record with Rice
contrasting the Civil War ironclad and sailors' courage with playing on-stage.
It's an audacious conceit, but the song's slow-burn build into cascading piano
runs, symphonic percussion, and joyous choruses makes it more elegiac than
pretentious. That song bleeds into the metronomic guitar riffs and driving pop
beat of "Rain," setting the table for the diversity that follows. "Click, Click,
Click, Click," with its infectious bouncing-ball beat and nylon-stringed guitar
runs, is surely coming to a Kodak commercial soon, while "Like Castanets" turns
from twangy shuffle to Caribbean-flavored calypso, the marimbas, glockenspiel,
and muted trumpet making for a delightful mini-vacation. Darbie Nowatka's gentle
vocal turn on "Butterfly Nets" is an effective mid-record change of pace and a
rare instance in rock where you'll find a saxophone and ukulele cohabitating.
Even the brief vignette "Shrinking Violet" and its oboe/banjo counterpoint is
another example of Bishop Allen's imaginative arrangements. Just about the only
misstep is "Middle Management," a straight-ahead power pop tune more suited to
the band's debut, Charm School - it's not a bad song, but the bar's been set
much higher everywhere else on The Broken String.

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