Broken Bells Announce A New Album, 'After The Disco', Out January 2014

broken bells ball

We tend to forget that James Mercer of the Shins has another project with Danger Mouse (real name Brian Burton), and we haven’t heard a lot of Broken Bells for quite some time. But Pitchfork has just announced a new album due sometimes in January 2014.

Entitled ‘After the Disco’, Broken Bells’ website is currently streaming a teaser trailer of a song, and, how do I put it? It may last less than a minute but it’s not quite my taste! Burton and Mercer are running in some kind of desert, reaching a futuristic-looking house, over a soundscape of weird electronic beats, not even very original, and Mercer’s falsetto vocals going all Barry Gibb.

So far, the duo has released a self-titled LP in 2010, followed by a 2011 EP ,Meyrin Fields’, but as much as I like the Shins, and appreciate Danger Mouse’s multi talents, I have never totally bought the product of their collaboration. Sure the trailer is very short, but the whole thing runs like a super production of a retro sci-fi movie soundtrack-ed by some Daft Punk-meet-the-Bee-Gees’ leftovers. It seems to be a big deal, all the big publications are mentioning it, I just hope they give a break to this faux-disco on the rest of the album.