With their debut, last year's Until the Earth Begins to Part, sweeping Scottish sextet Broken Records announced themselves as outsized emoters who never met a baroque chamber arrangement they didn't covet. They then pitched themselves to an audience of Caledonophiles who worship the crashing songcraft of Frightened Rabbit, the Twilight Sad, and We Were Promised Jetpacks. Compared to their fellow countrymen, however, Broken Records sounded overcooked: too intense for their glossy production, too self-serious to be relatable, and, overall, too reliant on over-the-top dynamics.
Though Broken Records have made no major changes to the aggressively earnest sound on their second album, Let Me Come Home, they have made some adjustments for the better. The overall mood is a little darker and the production rawer. They locate moments of relative quiet or expansiveness, instead of pitching a constant aural assault. And frontman Jamie Sutherland, whose guttural Boss-with-a-brogue bellowing grates, finally allows himself to sound simple at times. When he gives over to his stirring baritone (as on the restrained, sparse piano ballad "Dia Dos Namarados" or the beginning of "A Leaving Song") he sounds haunted and vulnerable rather than like a drunk having a tantrum. Yes, there are still moments when he relies too heavily on his raving caterwaul or an equally irritating Coldplay-like falsetto keening, but they are blessedly fewer and farther between on this album.
Broken Records have been called the Scottish Arcade Fire, but that is true only in theory, because both are huge bands with huge sounds that are obsessed with huge ideas. In practice, Broken Records are actually more like the Killers with accents (or, more accurately, without fake accents). Home's best track, "A Darkness Rises Up", recalls the Killers' own Sam's Town-era Springsteen affliction and plays like a sequel to "When You Were Young" with its insistent piano pounding, dramatically hushed bridge, and unrelenting drive. And like the Killers, Broken Records are strivers that sound so desperate to be liked that they give off a whiff of bloated (and unearned) self-importance.
But that said, the album's overall theme of searching for security resonates-- with the trifecta of "The Leaving Song", "I Used To Dream", and album closer "Home" forming a story arc of a man striking out on his own, looking for his place in the world, and wanting to return home-- and are nicely echoed in homey flourishes of Americana-influenced string arrangements and continual lyrical repetition. The band are smart to end with "Home", a track that not only offers the clearest sentiment (the loneliness-tinged, oft-repeated "let me come home," which is obviously central to the record as it forms its title), but also closes the collection with a swooning whisper instead of a raucous bleat, which allows even the album's most bombastic moments to recede into your memory. Let Me Come Home is still too overworked, but, as that final song proves, it represents a welcome shift toward (relative) musical simplicity and lyrical honestly that shows that the band is heading in the right direction.
