Edinburgh’s Broken Records were surrounded by hype when their first single, the wonderfully titled ‘If The News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It’, was released in April 2008. And rightly so – channelling the spirit of Beirut (the band, not the city) through vocals that were half Nick Cave and half Antony Hegarty, it was an impressive debut single full of great promise. But along the way, the hype dissipated and the Broken Records breakthrough never really happened.
It’s great, then, that on the eve of the release of their second album, the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen is teeming with a tangible sense of anticipation of the night ahead. And the band don’t disappoint. Although their songs are maudlin, dramatic affairs, their stage presence is jovial and good humoured, and the band members – six tonight, instead of the usual seven – clearly all thrive off the excited electricity of the crowd. Their set is a series of undulations – waves of sad sea foam green that build up slowly before crashing and spilling on the shore in a plethora of musical instrumentation.
‘A Leaving Song’ and ‘A Darkness Rises Up’ are glorious, soaring bursts of exuberant, National-esque nostalgia, while the aforementioned ‘If The News…’ is as powerful and affecting live now as it was on record then. That singer Jamie Sutherland is called back by the rapturous crowd for an impromptu encore is testament to the power of their songs, which manage to invert and recast one of the oldest sayings in the book – from now on, if it is broke, don’t fix it.
Words by Mischa Pearlman