Broken Bells

When two colossal icons from different musical worlds come together, the ensuing result can fall on a spectrum somewhere between two extremes. It can result in, at one end, an album that lacks any semblance of cohesion, where the styles fight furiously against each other to dominate. At the other end, the collaboration can result in an album greater than the sum of its two parts, where the combined styles complement each other so that an entirely novel sound emerges, one that neither musician could have produced alone. It is towards the latter end of this spectrum that we find Broken Bells, the new collaboration between James Mercer, lead singer of The Shins, and producer/musician Brian Burton a.k.a. Danger Mouse. The folk guitar strumming and soaring voice of Mercer fits impeccably into the hip-hop beats and electronic ambiance of Danger Mouse. However, a true synergy of the two styles never really comes across, leaving, simply, an undeniably catchy, though not terribly innovative, pop record.

Mercer has remained relatively consistent over the course of his career, fronting the Portland-based indie rock band The Shins for over a decade now. Danger Mouse, however, is known for branching out and mixing musical styles. His rise to fame came with 2004’s “The Grey Album,” which remixed Jay-Z’s “The Black Album” with the Beatles “The White Album”. Since then, Danger Mouse has never remained in one place, producing albums and creating beats with musicians like Gorillaz, Beck, and his own project with Cee-Lo Green, Gnarls Barkley. On “Broken Bells,” however, Danger Mouse is billed as Brian Burton, and has spoken of his desire to make clear that he is not just producing an album by another artist; Broken Bells is meant to be a stand-alone project. It’s hard to say from the debut, though, if it will stand as more than just a brief, albeit enjoyable, collaborative adventure.

For example, “The Ghost Inside” is arguably the most beguiling track on the album, yet it never transcends what the two individuals have previously created on their own. The song starts with a strong hip-hop beat and finds Mercer singing in a reverb-rich falsetto. Two-thirds in, it takes a turn and Mercer drops his voice down to his normal range where he is accompanied by the somewhat hackneyed vacillation of strings and heavy bass. The yearning and nomadic nature of Mercer’s voice traveling through Burton’s trip-hop setting is, as on most of Burton’s past productions, as intriguing as it is enjoyable.

While “The Ghost Inside” demonstrates how Mercer’s voice merges with Burton’s aesthetic, opener “The High Road” slips back and forth between two respective worlds, sounding more like The Shins as imagined by Danger Mouse then a project of its own. The song finds Mercer’s piercing voice singing a refrain with just the right amount of poeticism—“Cause they know and so do I / The high road is hard to find”—over an adroitly robotic synth melody. A poignant piano and bass bridge takes the song into a saccharine folk outro that sounds like it could have been lifted directly from a Shins album.

Mercer and Burton largely stick to their basic styles, and thus their joint product is not as experimental or original as one might have hoped. The sole creative peak is “Sailing to Nowhere,” which takes a number of surprising turns, beginning by oscillating back and forth between two different riffs until a swell of cosmic synth noises emerges, climaxing in an explosion of strings and an electric guitar solo. The transient nature of “Sailing to Nowhere” makes it one of the most captivating songs on the album, and shows what other tracks could have become if the group had taken a few more risks.

For the most part, however, Broken Bells avoid the pitfalls of high-profile collaboration, creating a safe yet strong album. But when names such as Danger Mouse and The Shins are dropped together, more than just a risk-free pop-album is going to be expected, and this potential is never fully realized here. If Mercer and Burton want Broken Bells to continue as a band, they will have to step just a bit further than this.

—Staff writer Matt E. Sachs can be reached at msachs@fas.harvard.edu.