ARTIST: Broken Bells
ALBUM: After the Disco
LABEL: Columbia
RELEASE DATE: February 4, 2014
Game Over
Written by Silas Valentino
Disco is dead, or sucks—depending on which bumper sticker you’re reading. Rock n’ Roll won the war back in the summer of 1979 when heaps of disco records were destroyed in a planned explosion during a Chicago White Sox’s game. After the famed Disco Demolition Night, disco music was left to stagger away like a Studio 54 bass player heading home alone after realizing the party is over. But on its way out, disco found the 1980s and a new breed of music was crafted. We know it as pop music.
Broken Bells make pop music for people who do not like pop music. Comprised of indie music’s prince James Mercer and Danger Mouse, the producer behind Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and that Black Keys’ song your mom likes. The duo met years ago at the 2004 Roskilde Festival in Denmark but they wouldn’t release any music together until 2010’s Broken Bells, their self-titled debut album. The record was met with a Grammy nomination and included the group’s instantly enjoyable song, “The High Road.” After a sold out tour and an EP release, Broken Bells return with their sophomore release. After the Disco is an album that embraces the success of disco mixed with its successor of ‘80’s pop.
“Perfect World” sets a spacey tone as the album’s introduction and features multiple modified synthesizers bouncing off each other as if there was no gravity in the recording studio. The main synth melody soon enters and binds all the sounds together, but you can’t deny the Flock of Seagulls resemblance. Danger Mouse, or Brian Burton, is known for producing tight drumming on his tracks and this beat is no different—like a metronome set to party. “Perfect World” really shines with the guitar solo that kicks in at the 3:39 mark. It has enough pure ‘80s mojo to reinstate Reagan.
The album’s lead single is the Bee Gee’s comparison “Holding On for Life.” But this isn’t the Travolta Saturday Night Fever dance, it feels more as if the cocaine has run low but everyone is still hanging out.
This theme of melancholy but still socializing is fairly consistent throughout After the Disco. Mercer’s lyrics can dabble into the kind of commentary usually reserved for a lonesome early morning walk home. “Oh London moon/ Help me stumble home/ Let me lose myself along the way,” sings Mercer on “Perfect World.” While it can be heard as sad or depressing, Mercer quickly finds the silver linings in the following lyrics, “I’ve got nothing left/ It’s kind of wonderful/ Cause there’s nothing they can take away from me.”
Broken Bells spoke with NPR Music last November and the topic of their lyrics and their inspiration arose. Burton responded with, “You know that movie Usual Suspects, where the guy is looking at all the things around the room and describing a whole story based on that? And then, next thing you know, you have this whole story that came from everything he saw. It’s kind of the way the lyrics were done here, where all of the conversations and hanging out James and I do outside the studio winds up finding its way into the record.”
James Mercer and Danger Mouse are a double threat in music production. Danger Mouse is well known for his quality producing and Mercer wrote the song that made us fall in love with Garden State. Together they make fairly perfect pop music and After the Disco is a collection of the sounds and thoughts these two make in midst of a Sunday sunrise.