Although their music was often categorized as some sort of electronica, UK’s Broadcast always had a tinge of hauntology, and even folk horror, to it. The work of duo Trish Keenan and James Cargill often felt like the past, maybe the distant past, being superimposed over the present. It is the kind of art which makes me wonder if many Brits feel as if they are under the weight of so much history.
Their album which most channels these vibes is 2024’s Spell Blanket. Rarely has a collection been more accurately titled. The overall impression is there is magic, and potentially that of a darker hue, embedded in these recordings. Even the titles suggest this, whether explicitly (“Call Sign”, “Crone Motion”) or elliptically (“Fatherly Veil”, “Dream Power”).
Album opener “The Song Before the Song Comes Out” has Keenan singing a cappella while in motion. Apparently singing into a device like a dictation recorder, I get the feeling she was walking outdoors, her footsteps forming a rhythm for the track. It is a pure and beautiful moment, but also uncomfortably intimate, as if we are reading somebody’s diary.
If that was like a scribbled note, the next number is one of a few tracks here which could have passed for a full-band release. “March of the Fleas” is echo-y and deeply gothic. It sounds like it was recorded in a tomb, Keenan is accompanied by electric guitar, ghostly background vocals and some electronic noises that could have been the product of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Similar in feel is “My Marble Eye”, a brief, solo instrumental on organ which gives me the feeling we have eavesdropped on the Phantom of the Opera.
This collection of demos recorded from 2006 to 2009 reveals a stronger connection to nature and folk music than most of their oeuvre would suggest. Much of it is little more than Keenan singing and playing acoustic guitar, even if lo-fi studio techniques like double-tracking her vocals are employed. It brought to mind such small-run, folk-rock records as those by Peter Howell and Jose Ferdinando. “Mother Plays Games” even has what sounds like a Mellotron.
For what is ostensibly a collection of demos, the quality of the tunes is astonishing. Tracks like “Roses Red” are downright catchy. A singalong quality is an aspect of many of the songs, with some feeling like a child’s introduction to witchcraft. In this regard, I was reminded of the website and various books of Scarfolk, a strange sort of parody of hauntology tropes undercut by a real vein of menace. “I Blink You Blink” scans like a ritual. I don’t want to know what happens if we decide to do as Keenan suggests and “Join In Together”. I’m not sure if the carnivalesque “I Run In Dreams” is whimsical or unnerving. “Hairpin Memories” is not far off from “The Maypole Song” from The Wicker Man.
Other tracks are wordless a cappella bits like “Singing Game”. Others still are nothing but brief snippets of curious sounds, things that might not be remarkable outside of context, but which warrant consideration given their deliberate inclusion here.
The lyrical content is largely melancholy and introspective. The very infectious “Petal Alphabet” has as its chorus: “love cerebral hugs/love cerebral hugs/full of loving ideas […] no more ladder anxie-tears”. The title of “I Want To Be Fine” is truth in advertising, with the words addressing trees full of new leaves, these green tears being offered to the singer. It ties a focus on the within to the natural world outside. But the album is far from being one long dirge, with “Hip Bone to Hip Bone” being surprisingly sensual, and “Grey Grey Skies” being a brief little joke ending in “the sky is closed for repairs”.
The final run of three songs is superb. “Colour In the Numbers” is like a previously unknown children’s record from the early 70’s, with such lines as “the man in the time machine knows when/to color in the numbers one to ten.” A capella “I Am the Bridge” has Keenan presenting herself as “the bridge between the living/through my eyes/and through my giving”. Funereal closer “Spirit House” could easily have been included on Air’s The Virgin Suicides soundtrack.
Those last two tracks bring to a perfect close what is the last release of entirely previously unknown material from Broadcast (an additional collection was released after this, but those were demos of released album tracks). It is the last because Keenan died of pneumonia in 2011, and these recordings are from MiniDiscs and 4-track tapes assembled by surviving partner James Cargill. I cannot begin to imagine how painful the process of going through that material must have been, but the results are spectacular. It amazes me that, not only is this a work so cohesive that it feels like it was planned from the beginning, but that I find it to be the best album, period.