GUNS AND MOROSE-S Broken West
Jun 09, 2009
The L.A. band ditches happy melody for bummer rhythm.
BY HAL BIENSTOCK
If the Broken West's debut album, I Can't Go On, I'll Go On, was like a ray of sunshine, full of perfect power pop melodies and massive harmonies, the Los Angeles quartet's follow-up Now or Heaven (Merge) is the sound of gray skies. The darker sound reflects a gloomier mindset among the band members after spending much of the last year on the road.
"I romanticized what [touring] would be like," said singer-guitarist Ross Flournoy. "It's rewarding, but it's also very hard living out of a suitcase and sleeping in a different bed every night. It can be grueling and it made things at home very difficult."
Where I Can't Go On garnered comparisons to Big Star and the Kinks, Now or Heaven is more like Coldplay and Radiohead because of its moodiness and its integration of electronic rhythms. Flournoy says the newfound interest in rhythm comes from touring with the National and the Walkmen, two bands whose music is propelled by their drummers. It also provided a way to escape the power pop label, which he says can sometimes be a dead-end.
"Now that some people know who we are, I don't feel like we have to come out with guns blazing and introduce every melody in the first five seconds of a song," he says. "These songs aren't as immediately catchy, but they're more rewarding because they build over time."
Still, Flournoy wasn't prepared for the reaction. "We all knew it was different, but... when the early reaction was ‘Holy shit, this is really different,' I started to get a little nervous. But I'm glad we stuck to our guns."
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