Release Date: May 29, 2012
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock, Lo-Fi, Noise Pop, Shoegaze
Record label: Hardly Art
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In the romantic Shakespeare play The Tempest, subservient island dweller Caliban explains, "... the isle is full of noises/Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not/Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments/Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices..." to convey the mysterious beauty of his home. This hypnotic, magical atmosphere, and the motifs of wild water, drowning, and mysterious sounds are mirrored by Broken Water on their second album and Hardly Art debut that shares its title with the classic work.
Last year, Yuck demonstrated that it was possible to borrow heavily from the likes of Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth and still make an enjoyable album that didn't sound like a complete rip-off. And now Olympia, WA's Broken Water do almost exactly the same thing ? almost. It all starts off happily enough with "Drown" and "Coming Down," both of which could happily sit alongside anything from Bad Moon Rising-era Sonic Youth, but then things go a little awry.
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