While this writer generally believes that two years or more between albums (roughly the strike rate we seem obliged to endure these days) isn't good enough, there are always notable exceptions where you're glad the participants kicked back and took their time with the creative flow. For every "Second Coming" disappointment, there's a "Here's Tom With The Weather"(Shack) or a "Hats"(Blue Nile) to go against the grain.
Thankfully, BROADCAST are another outfit who exploit the taking-your-time formula to usually effective ends. Indeed, while it's been three long years since their previous album "The Noise Made By People" blinked in the daylight, the time has been occupied judiciously and "HaHa Sound" is testament to this Brum trio's studio-based diligence.
Actually, I say 'trio', but fourth member Neil Bullock's rolling, Jaki Leibezeit-style drumming wizardry is also crucial to the plot, and his dexterity (his work was recorded in a church hall across the road from bassist James Cargill's house where the rest of the album was laid down) adds an important rhythmic edge to tracks like the bracing "Man Is Not A Bird" and the recent single "Pendulum", which finds them locking beautifully into the sinewy logic of a real Can-style groove before heading off into inner space.
So, yeah, Krautrock's obviously still big round Broadcast's house, but that's not the entire plot writ large, as elsewhere their muse drifts happily into areas for which the term 'cinematic' was surely coined. Lyrically, Trish Keenan references Milos Forman's 'Loves Of A Blonde' and Hans Richter, while the "Valerie" is based on the Czech horror/ fairytale 'Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders.' I haven't seen it myself, but the song certainly fascinates, sounding akin to a lullabye with teeth, if you will. "Before We Begin," and "Ominous Cloud" on the other hand, have elements of Phil Spector and great, girl-group pop and feature perhaps Keenan's most attractive vocals here.
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Crucially, too, ye olde British pastoral Psychedelia hasn't been relegated, either. In fact, several of "HaHa Sound"s best outings (such as "Lunch Hour Pops" and the opening "Colour Me In" with its' typically whimical lyrical input: e.g: "If green is chasing the hills over miles, if blue is pursuing the sky") are entirely informed by it, while "The Little Bell" is straight out of the Lewis Carroll-influenced world of Syd Barrett and rightly proud of it.
As expected, "HaHa Sound" also has room for the de rigeur atonal instrumental passages, but thankfully the weird, jazzy scuttles of "Black Umbrellas" and "Distorsion" don't feel the need to outstay their welcome and "Minim" develops into something tricksy and promising despite its' inauspicious start, reinforcing the fact that songcraft is obviously as dear to Broadcast's collective heart as found sounds and experimentation.
"HaHa Sound" is a beautifully-realised, gently seductive album that grows in stature with repeated plays. Its' creators' well-documented studio boffin approach may initially suggest something cold and clinical, but in Broadcast's capable hands, the end result is warm, inclusive and entirely human. The last laugh is resoundingly theirs, it seems.
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