3. BroadcastTender Buttons
Broadcast are basically my favourite band pretty much; them and Stereolab, but I think Broadcast probably top them. I love everything that they’ve done. As an album this is their most perfect singular piece in a way. The songwriting is definitely more direct – there’s a poppy kind of focus to it – but it’s always undercut with weird, jagged noise that exists in this perfect space between futuristic and nostalgic. It sort of exists in this nowhere place. The production for me is the apex of what I would always aspire to.
I used to listen to it a lot when I was in the Pipettes and me and Gwenno would talk about how much we loved it. And some of Trish Keenan’s melodies are very much steeped in English folk melodies, so there are all these weird little references that I think are always undercutting something that could be a bit more obvious. Her lyrics are a bit more personal on this record – they’re less oblique than on Ha Ha Sound – but you still can’t quite grasp them, which is fascinating for the listener.
I never got to see them. I had a couple of gigs that I planned to go to and then she died. A complete fucking tragedy.
