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TENDER BUTTONS
WARP
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This outfit from Birmingham, England, formed in the mid ’90s to discover how mechanical a live band could sound. (The answer, as heard on the ’97 singles round-up Work and Non Work: pretty damn mechanical.) Since then, Broadcast have narrowed both their charter and their membership; according to the liner notes of this their third album, singer Trish Keenan and bassist James Cargill wrote, played, recorded, and mixed everything. It’s a believable claim: each song sounds constructed from hundreds of tiny bits of sonic debris (a wisp of guitar fuzz, perhaps, or the echo of a malfunctioning drum machine), as if Keenan and Cargill were attempting to make up for their small number with detail. And Tender Buttons works because the duo limit what they do with that detail, building up ghostly, twinkling soundscapes around Keenan’s chilly but luscious vocal melodies. These neat, ordered tracks are all of a piece; the sound is exceptionally deep without being very wide. Broadcast + Gravenhurst | Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm Ave, Boston | Nov 8 | 617.228.6000.
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