Photo: Bandcamp
The role of influences in creating music is a tricky thing to talk about. On the one hand, no artist wants to sound like they are copying wholesale from someone else but also, there is almost nothing new under the sun. Any music contains parts of what’s come before and with whole genres built on using samples and existing recordings the idea of using sounds of the past in new ways is very much ingrained in modern music.
It’s interesting then to come across a band like Denver Colorado’s Broken Record who are not only aware of their influences but make an effort to draw your attention to them.
Last week Tony Stamp reviewed the debut album from Ōtautahi band Model Home and mentioned that their music, which is in a similar vein to Broken Record brought to mind “the power pop adrenaline of Chapel Hill 90s stars Superchunk”. The same goes for Nothing Moves Me, but perhaps the biggest influence I can hear is that of emo/pop-punk band Jimmy Eat World. There is a certain type of harmony that Jimmy Eat World and their counterparts utilised, and vocalist and guitarist Lauren Beecher replicates it perfectly here, especially on tracks such as Blueprinting.
Perhaps I’m dating myself here but I was 15 years old when Jimmy Eat World’s breakthrough album Bleed American Came out and for me and my similarly music-obsessed friends, it was a landmark album. As I've grown older, my tastes have diversified a bit but as I was scrolling through Bandcamp’s New and Notable section I was taken somewhat aback to hear music that sounded very much like the music I listened to as a teenager. I must admit I was sceptical at first, but after listening to the rest of the album, I got a better sense of where Broken Record were coming from. The notes on the Bandcamp page for the album sum it up well saying that “with 50+ years of sonically diverse alternative music to draw from, it seems intuitive that a band would utilize the full scope of sounds available to them in order to synthesize something uniquely their own.”
As the album progresses the songs move towards slower tempos often starting with chorus-soaked guitars and moving towards walls of distortion as the song reaches a crescendo.
Lyrically, Nothing Moves Me is not the most optimistic of albums. One sample, from the song Vacuum Tube Supplies sees Beecher sing the line “What do you do When the void fills you? A steady flow of vacant thoughts the sum of which is nil”.
Like many of their influences, Broken Record’s lyrics focus on isolation and despair. Easy to dismiss as youthful angst, but it’s those emotions and the expression of them that fuel the Emo genre and it’s precisely why this music speaks to people at a certain point in their lives. Songs like Runners Digest which contrast detuned guitars and minor chords with the aforementioned harmonies capture that angst perfectly.
Nothing Moves Me is an album that manages to wear its influences on the sleeve of a much-worn hoodie emblazoned with a band name. Yet it doesn’t feel reductive or pastiche, instead managing to take old ideas and breathe new life into them.
