REVIEW: Trembling Blue Stars, Broken By Whispers
(Shinkansen/Sub Pop)
- Niles Baranowski
Even if it had no musical merit, the release of Broken By Whispers would be an event to be celebrated for being the first proper American release from a Field Mice member. The prickly, delicate songcraft of Robert Wratten (who headed up both the Mice and Northern Picture Library, in addition to his current Trembling Blue Stars work) has been missing for far too long from the libraries of literate pop fans nationwide. Anyone who credits Belle and Sebastian or Kindercore Records with a rebirth of smart, sensitive and drowsy-catchy songcraft will be surprised to learn that Wratten has been crafting subtle masterpieces in the same vein for the last decade.
Broken By Whispers is hardly Wratten's definitive opus (import geeks are ordered to seek out Where'd You Learn to Kiss That Way?, a double disc of Field Mice favorites) but it does include some haunting, shadowy balladry of the first order. "Sometimes I Still Feel the Bruise" has a harpsichord line that reverberates like fingers down your spine and "To Leave It Now" is an elaborate origami construction of new wave melancholy that comes within kissing distance of OMD's early heartbreakers.
Like the Mice before them, the Stars are least precious when they can branch out into different territory and while there's nothing as adventurous as the former's effortless adventures in house or dub, there are moments ("Ripples," "Fragile") when they can drown out the twee in a wash of guitar that pours down from above. Wratten's trademark trebly guitar sound is an apt vehicle for his songs' hurt sensitivity and still keeps him head-and-shoulders above other doe-eyed tunesmiths who've descended from his detiritus. Similarly, his lyrics cut deeper, like the faultlines between pain and bitter emptiness. "The person you were/ I know you're not her," he says sadly in his boxed-in choirboy whisper. There are even moments when, with the help of producer Ian Catt (who brought the same moody flow to St. Etienne's early work) he can summon up glittery glumness that wouldn't be out of place on an early Cure record, like the gothic escapism of "Sleep." But for all of his tricks to beef up his sound, he trumps himself when he's stripped down to just the basics. "Birthday Girl" is so simple--with just Wratten making his acoustic guitar shimmer -- that the song's loneliness feels liberating, maybe even ideal. Whispers is a similar act of alchemy, crafting charm from a motherlode of disaffection.
