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CMU Approved
Approved: Broken Bells
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 8 March 2010
Danger Mouse and James Mercer from The Shins may not immediately seem like an obvious pairing, but listening to the debut album from their joint project Broken Bells confirms that it wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.
The first taste of their collaboration, of course, was on a track on ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’, an album written and produced by Danger Mouse and the sadly departed Mark Linkous, which last week received the long-awaited go ahead for a proper release, after a legal dispute with EMI was settled.
The complete Broken Bells album allows the duo to explore fully a sound that meets their differing styles beautifully. Mercer’s guitar and vocals are given a more pacey backing than his main band usually offers, while Danger Mouse is brought a fragility and quiet subtlety in stark contrast to something like Gnarls Barkley.
The album can be heard in full on the duo’s MySpace page.