From the moment Broken Records assembled on stage — all seven of them, some playing instruments as they arrived — to their exit less than an hour later, they were so breathtakingly brilliant that it would be hard not to hail them as Britain’s best new live band. Despite releasing their debut album, Until the Earth Begins to Part, only last week, the Edinburgh outfit are already accustomed to adulation. A year of superb singles has seen them unofficially dubbed Scotland’s answer to Arcade Fire, yet no amount of expectation could match the sheer joy of seeing them live.
Broken Records are a rock band mired in folk music, or maybe folkies who throw a great party. They filled the ICA’s stage not only physically, but with a swelling, symphonic sound that was part violent punk, part Gypsy folk, part traditional fiddle music and part French pop, with an attention to detail in the arrangements that recalled recent Elbow. The frontman, Jamie Sutherland, sang like a fisherman touched by an angel, transforming desolate lyrics into uplifting odes to battling bad times with life’s little pleasures.
The set opener, Nearly Home, began with a duel between cello and fiddle, exploded into a riot of marching-band drums, squalling trumpet and rapid-fire guitars, then ended with gentle piano. It sounded like seven songs squeezed into one, but never lost grip of its glorious melody. If The News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It set the jerkiness of Franz Ferdinand to the orchestral opulence of Sigur R?s, while Wolves was a magnificent ballad that somehow summoned the splendour of the Scottish Highlands.
In a set that soared but never sagged, it was hard to pick a highlight, but the sombre, accordion-accompanied sea shanty A Warning was a genius rehash of Johnny Cash, and Thoughts on a Picture (In a Paper, January 2009), on which Sutherland switched to ukelele, felt like a force of nature. If Broken Records play with as much passion on festival stages, the summer is theirs for the taking.
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Broken Records play Talking Heads, Southampton, on Fri. Tour details: www.brokenrecordsband.com