Album Review: BRKN LOVE - BRKN LOVE

The complaints have been going on for almost as long as I can remember that rock is dying, and there isn't a new generation of bands coming up to carry on and sustain the genre. That's true, but for multiple reasons. There is a deficit of great new rock bands that have the kind of mainstream appeal to bring rock back, but the ones that do exist also can't get any traction because the old guard refuses to retire and go away. When you still have bands of guys near or in their 70s trying to act the part of rockers, the money all flows to them, and they make rock seem so much less cool than it really is. That's how Imagine Dragons gets to call itself rock. If the current, weak-ass form of The Who are rock, who says that hard pop can't be too?

So now we get yet another band trying to be the next rockers to break on through. Recorded live to tape, BRKN LOVE (spelling like that pisses me off) tries to find the balance between polished and edgy. That's a tall task to take on with a debut record.

I appreciate the sentiment of wanting to make a more old-school record, but not everything from the past is worth replicating. The guitar tones throughout the record are fuzzy, and often washed in the mix, leaving the record almost sounding like your ear is partially plugged up. The parts that are supposed to sound heavy don't, because the guitars have enough fizz on them that the notes blend and dissipate. I have never thought fuzz was heavy, and I still don't when I hear it here. These songs need more bite on the guitars.

"I See Red" sounds very much like it could be a Daughtry song, including Justin Benolo's vocal tone, except for the guitars sounding like they were ripped out of an early Queens Of The Stone Age record. I don't think they were going for a hazy, inebriated stoner sound, so softening the edges of their axes renders them Nerf. But it gets even worse on "Shot Down", where the guitars are so fuzzed-out and clipping in the mix that I turned it off right after the first chorus. That wasn't momentous enough to make it worth listening to more of that painful production. A digital recording can sound just as bad, but at least it would have given them more options for cleaning it up after the fact. That song is unacceptable. It's better than Baroness' "Gold & Grey" (the new standard for shit-sounding music), but not by much.

As the record keeps going, I'm struck with a feeling that I know exactly what the band is going for, and can't identify exactly why it fails. They want the ramshackle feeling of the first Foo Fighters record, but they don't have the charm and the songwriting to shine through the rough edges and make the investment worthwhile. Last year, we got a very similar feeling record from Feeder, except they had several gloriously memorable songs, and their scruffy production was warm and soft, whereas BRKN LOVE's is brittle and harsh. Instead of a fog wrapping around you on a chilly day, they are the cold slap of a wind chill when the mercury can barely be seen. It isn't pleasant.

There are some solid songs, and some indications that the group could get better in the future, but this record also tells me they have serious decision making issues that need to be addressed. I really like "Toxic Twin", and a couple other tracks, but when they have intentionally made the music so difficult to listen to, I can't help but take it personally, like they don't want me to listen to them. I can't think of any good reason otherwise to make a record that doesn't try to put its best foot forward.

So that's the story of BRKN LOVE. They have some good songs, but I just don't want to put myself through listening to this record, not with the alarms it sets off in my migraine-prone brain. This is probably a better record than I'm making it sound, or than it sounds to me, but I have to be honest.