Broken Records

Having parted ways with label 4AD after their critically acclaimed second album ‘Let Me Come Home’, Broken Records return from a three year hiatus with the self-released ‘Weights & Pulleys’.

A rich combination of folk and rock influences with Jamie Sutherland’s yearning, melancholic voice, the Edinburgh band produce a sound that is undoubtedly Scottish. You can feel the damp and the cold. You can smell the peat and the pine. You can see the grey sunless sky.

As an album ‘Weights and Pulleys’ speaks of loss, perhaps of the optimistic dreams of youth. The disappointment is palpable as Sutherland sings on ‘Ditty (We Weren’t Ready)’: “Best forget what we could have been / We weren’t ready”; or on ‘Winterless Son’, “We were going to be anything we wanted / We were going to be anywhere but here”. The title track continues this sense of missed opportunities with the lines: “And I know the plans we made / We were steaming / They were never going to hold”, before Sutherland beautifully describes closing his eyes to watch his partner breathing in their sleep, imploring them to wait and not leave him on his own when they wake. The fear of life passing by without you haunts the grooves of ‘Weights & Pulleys’.

Musically, songs bound along with the propulsive energy of a ceilidh band or unwind majestically like a slow air. Weights & Pulleys is an assured record from a band unafraid to wear their heart on their sleeve and follow their own path.