Broken Land, Audio Postcard

[ED. NOTE: After writing this review, it came to our attention that Broken Land is actually made up of the leftover members of a broken-up band called The Wails…who we’d had a review of from a while back that never ran (since, y’know, the band broke up & all). At any rate, with this new effort now out there, we thought it’d be interesting to run both reviews at the same time. Refer here for the review of The Wails album…]

It’s a weird thing to say, I know, but maybe it’s the throwback sound that shrouds all of Audio Postcard that keeps it afloat. I mean, if I looked at these songs as coming from just some random mid-tempo rock, they’d really be pretty unremarkable, just the usual bland, same-old-thing-sounding thing. On this album, though, Broken Land manage to sound like they stepped out of The Wayback Machine from the tail-end of the ’60s, when Indian instrumentation had already spent a while steadily creeping into psychedelic music of all kinds.

It’s hard to get away from the distinctive sound of the tablas (there’s also something called a “tanpura,” but I’ve got no idea what that might be), especially on tracks like “Dervish,” “Priest,” or “Obfuscate”; the overall effect at times is that of a more overtly mod Cornershop. Not to worry, mind you — apparently the three members of Broken Land are aiming for that sort of stylistic collision, even referring to themselves as “Hindie-rock” on their CDBaby page. (Yeowch. Um, yeah, I guess that works…)

The bulk of the disc feels like it wouldn’t be out-of-place on some British Invasion comp somewhere, wedged in-between The Dave Clark Five and The Troggs. There’s a nicely warm sound to it all, sort of a light fuzz coating everything that keeps it from sounding too modern and hyperprocessed (and that’s a very nice change of pace, lately). The songs are sometimes funky, sometimes strange, and occasionally silly (and yes, “Grey Men” does indeed seem to be about E.T.s), with the pseudo-British accent on the vocals heightening the whole Brit-rock resemblance, but I find myself liking it, especially on the tabla-heavy “Obfuscate.” Even when Broken Land slip and betray a hint of more modern (relatively) influences here and there, like the Mission of Burma-sounding guitar figure that drives “My TV” or the jangly ’90s-indie feel to “LZ,” thankfully, the adulteration actually seems to make the songs sound better and not worse.

So, the final analysis? Audio Postcard ain’t bad, especially considering how bad it truly had the potential to be. (Memo to musicians: when you throw tablas into the mix, you immediately start walking the tightrope between Cool Cultural Appropriation/Homage and Ridiculous Crap Your Ageing Hippie Uncle Wouldn’t Even Listen To. Just a helpful warning.) Hat tip to Broken Land for making it work.