Track Listing

1. On the Bubble
2. So It Goes
3. Down in the Valley
4. Shiftee
5. Brass Ring
6. Big City
7. You Can Build an Island
8. Hale Sunrise
9. Abigail
10. Slow
11. Baby on My Arm
12. Like a Light

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #145002 in Music
• Released on: 2007-01-23
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Album Description
Their debut is a power-pop gem, shimmering and cool, with sharp edges and soaring melodies. The record deals with eternal themes of isolation, distance, and the longing for a center - a sense of place - in this topsy-turvy world. The Kinks, Big Star, and The Byrds, as well as more contemporary favorites like Spoon, Wilco, and Teenage Fanclub are certainly touchstones, but The Broken West's winning songs stand on their own.

Customer Reviews

In the silence you don't know, you must go on...
If you read any of the music blogs out there, you'll know that I'm not the first to say the following: This is a record that will likely stand as one of the great musical statements of its generation.

Not since the Strokes' debut has a band appeared with so cohesive and persuasive a document of the feelings of people their age. Superficially, there is very little to recommend a comparison to the Strokes. The Broken West feature harmonies, handclaps, keyboards and an expansive production palette. Yet, both are the standout bands of their relative cities and scenes (in case of the Broken West, the Silver Lake/Echo Park power pop scene), elevated above the rest of the pack due to the excellence of songs, production, lyrics, musicianship and no small amount of charisma.

Just as the Strokes have their own clear influences, it is not difficult to tell that the Broken West adore their Brian Wilson, ELO, George Harrison and Alex Chilton LPs. "I Can't Go On, I'll Go On" isn't an exercise in replication, however. Instead, the band reforms these sounds of innocence and lost love. It weaves them into a blanket that it drapes over a dystopic vision of youth and young manhood in which we are guilty by association with the world into which we are born and we question if we'll ever find love enough to lose. For all its sunshine and "ooh-ooh-ooh"s, there's a tension to this music, a feeling that at any moment the curtain might be pulled back and we'll be forced to reckon with the fears we keep hidden from others and, mostly, ourselves.

The Broken West embrace and repurpose decades of power pop music, mix in their own ideas and outlook and emerge with a stunning and coruscating record of a life that is helpless but not without hope. I've been listening to this record in pieces since various songs began leaking onto the internet months ago. Today I was finally able to hear the album several times and, as catchy as the individual songs are, it really should be listened to as a complete thought.

This is a truly special album.

Muddling Through
After 3 listens to these largely undifferentiated tracks, I became resigned to the conclusion that my enjoyment had quickly plateaued. The musicianship is adequate at best, the rhythmic elements are not particularly inspiring and the vocals are submerged in the mix. There is simply not enough "there" there and it feels repetitive in spots. For the limited range that this music trades in, it seemed passable, but it would be far down my list of go-to stuff on the I-Pod. I could go on, but I won't.

Great sound
The Broken West is the first band in some time that provided a double-take moment when "panning for gold" on XMU. You have to sift through a lot of junk, but once in a while, you come across a real nugget like The Broken West's Brass Ring. Keep up the good work.