Groop plays voltage in milky weather

When Broadcast released 1997's Work and Non Work, a compilation of two singles and an EP, I was taken in by the way Trish Keenan's icy, distant voice played off the band's murky analogue synthesizers. The combination of female vocals and vintage keyboards made Stereolab comparisons inevitable, but while Stereolab's driving wall of Moogs propelled their songs onward, Broadcast's synths haunted their melodies, shakily hovering above the mix like music from some far-off gramophone.

I eagerly awaited a full-length LP from Broadcast, but none came. By the end of 1998, I began to invent possible excuses for the band. Perhaps it was out scavenging garage sales and thrift stores for some long-lost Roland with the perfect eerie timbre. By the end of 1999, I had given up on Broadcast, imagining that the members had retired to a post-rock Elysian Fields somewhere down below. Finally, Broadcast have released The Noise Made by People, which due to strange industry ins-and-outs is on Tommy Boy Records. I picked it up and put it in my stereo, eager to see if newfound labelmates Coolio and Naughty by Nature had had any influence on Broadcast's new sound.

And after three years of secrecy and anticipation, The Noise Made by People sounds more or less like Work and Non Work. If I sound disappointed, it's only because of the long wait. The band does an excellent job of taking beguiling elements that worked well in one song from their previous singles and flushing them out over the course of an entire album. Many of the songs on The Noise hang in the balance between pop music and carefully crafted ambience. The opener, "Long Was the Year," lays down a hypnotic but catchy bass riff and seems forever poised to break out into a singsong chorus. But the refrain never comes, and instead a piano takes over the melody as a glistening sheet of background noise builds up behind the music and eventually engulfs it. The song produces the same effect as one of these unseasonably cool and cloudy spring days, the ones that don't close with an ordinary sunset but instead fade into dim blue light.

As The Noise progresses, Broadcast begins to shed its cryptic atmospherics and allow its poppier tendencies to emerge. However, it down-plays these touches so that the pop doesn't disrupt the album's ethereal quality. Keenan's voice is beautiful but detached, and most of her lyrics (i.e. "The wind will come/blow answer echoes answer") are too fragmented to sing along with. The soaring keyboard line in "Come On Let's Go," the first single off The Noise, is buried too far in the mix to be a hook. Jagged chords cut up the otherwise bouncy "Papercuts," giving it a subtly menacing air. Even the radio-friendly choral backing vocals and ebullient waltz beat of "City in Progress" are undermined by the horror-movie sound effects and swirling high notes of "Dead the Long Year," the album's instrumental closer. The creeping strings that conclude The Noise Made by People have the same cloudy day effect as the end of "Long Was the Year." They're vaguely disturbing, but somehow they complete the album. Broadcast has succeeded in creating a seamless record that's creepy, but just melodic enough to stay with you. Buy it before the weather gets any better. (Tommy Boy)

—Eliot Rose

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