3. BroadcastTender Buttons
I was really into twee indie bands for a while in my early 20s, and then a friend gave me a Broadcast CD and it kind of shook my world a bit. I think I responded so strongly to this record because it’s still got hooks, amazing vocals, excellent lyrics and then something a bit more edgy or ominous. I was trying to think about why that was. There are two reasons that I could think of. First, it’s about the way that James Cargill plays the synth in a quite spiky manner that just punctured through like it’s not soft and gentle, like some of the twee stuff that I was into. And to my young ears, Trish Keenan’s lyrics were so interesting and weird. I think there’s a song on this record about her mum being a prostitute. Another about America’s military? But they had a private quality as if they were not made for the listener and her delivery felt like witnessing something a person shares only with themselves.
It feels like you can’t quite easily empathize with it, although I can relate to a lot of things, but I also feel a little bit like an intruder into somebody’s private place. I love its openness coupled with keeping the distance, and not making a statement to anyone. It’s quite introverted, we hear a lot from extroverts and people that want to tell us things, and it’s quite a privilege to be able to hear the inner workings of someone’s private mind, articulating so well something imagistic that it just draws you into their world. I like the fact that these recordings were intended as demos and then ended up being used as the final record. I think you can hear real intimacy and immediacy in the recordings. Trish said Tender Buttons is about ‘letting go of the embarrassment of letting go’ and I love that. What a brilliant motivation for making a record. I’m not sure if that’s what she means, but it’s like finding that capacity to not think about how other people are going to interpret what you’re making and feels like a really important motivation for creating something.
