Broadcast Album Reviews

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The Noise Made by People (2000)

The Noise Made by People (2000)

7

Long Was the Year / Unchanging Window / Minus One / Come On Let's Go / Echo's Answer / Tower of Our Tuning / Papercuts / You Can Fall / Look Outside / Until Then / City in Progress / Dead in the Long Year

Listen to The Noise Made by People and you'll have visions of French black & white movies with mysterious blondes, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and perhaps also the Thunderbirds (the puppets, not the cars). Even though they're obviously a modern band - and a fashionable one at that - Broadcast prepared you a casserole with all kinds of ingredients, most of which evoke a '60's classiness you could find in French and British pop culture. Sometimes sounding like a spacey Cardigans, a lounge Portishead, cinematographer's Dusty Springfield, or Stereolab-meets-Yo La Tengo, they combine the harmlessness and innocence of dream-pop with little orchestral touches, hints of bossa, sci-fi themes and orchestral pop from the Françoise Hardy/Lee Hazlewood/Gainsbourg-school of lushness. Enough namedropping. The main question is: "Do they get away with it?" The answer: "Yes, but not always." The thing is, this has already been done by so many bands in the '90's that you'll have to come up with some pretty spectacular songs to prove you're not handling it by the book. Broadcast do add their own identity, mainly by relying more on the cinematographic quality of their music than their competition does, but they don't really pull it off when trying to disband that pop feeling altogether. The more up-tempo the songs, the better they are. The minimal use of bass and piano and "innocent little girl"-vocals in opener "Long Was the Year," as well the Bacharach-meets-Gainsbourg of "Unchanging Window" (man, that evokes images of glass walls, vinyl furniture and skinny French Nancy Sinatra look-alikes with high boots) are quite comfortable, but it isn't until the joyful bounce of "Come On Let's Go" that you'll give in to the band's charming drive. Like Belgian band Hooverphonic and indie heroes Stereolab, the band succeeds in conjuring up this atmosphere of '60's London chic (can you see the pretty girls with their shopping bags?). Equally irresistible are the wistful "Look Outside" (great vocal melody) and the marvellous, hypnotizing lullaby "Until Then," which is an undisputed highlight. The final stunner (hey, there's your kick-ass EP!) is the orchestral Casio-pop of "Papercuts," which constantly seems to threaten to explode into a bossa-direction. It's a bit of a hit-or-miss affair with the more minimal stuff that's less about bombarding you with sweet melodies than creating a mood: single "Echo's Chamber" and You Can Fall" are aural candy, just like the tracks that start off the album, but their childlike simplicity is still quite far removed from equally minimal - but more satisfying - Yo La Tengo-material. The same is applicable to the three instrumental cuts ("Minus One, "Tower of Our Tuning," Dead the Long Year") on the album: nice, occasionally spooky, occasionally pretty, but most of all "just nice" and nothing more than that. The best moments of The Noise Made by People reassure you the band is more than talented enough to deliver an album that's not just "nice," but unfortunately they've fallen into the same trap as some of their contemporaries (Laika, Saint Etienne, Ladytron, etc) and thought they could get away with material that still needed to be fleshed-out. But what am I complaining about? It is a fine album that'll look good on you and I heard they seriously improved on this one with their second album… Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill!