Album Premiere: Broken Record – I Died Laughing

Posted: by The Editor

I’ve heard Denver, CO and Portland, OR referred to as Sister Cities: two cities out west with similar relatively young, relatively hip populations, and steady growth in the comestible industries: food, beer, coffee, and weed. As a resident of the latter, a parallel that gets less press is the cities’ shared distance from the DIY touring hubs along the east coast that allow bands to play several dates in quick succession. There are routes from Denver and Portland to other large cities, but the days burned on travel time make touring for smaller bands difficult to impossible. Their DIY scenes, as a result, have felt insular compared to the northeast. The best route to success for a band in Portland has historically been to leave Portland. Excellent emo bands like Duck! Little Brother, Duck! and Snow Roller built a thriving local community out of basement shows, but came and went with only a faint ripple on blogs and Tumblr pages.

Denver, similarly, is fighting to have its well-deserved moment, for the bands populating the local scene to reach a wider audience. Broken Record’s first full length album, I Died Laughing, makes as strong as case for Mile High DIY as I’ve heard yet.

The band’s self-described fuzzy pop songs have a shimmer of shoegaze influence, but everything is used in service of crafting driving bangers. The record wastes zero time in getting to the point: a single guitar rings out for 3 urgent seconds before the full band kicks into “Time Warp,” a smoldering jam that has echoes of Tigers Jaw’s 2010 album, Two Worlds. But the real introduction to the album comes one song later: “Full Circle” weaponizes the aggressive catchiness of Paramore; more punk than pop-punk, but no less hooky. There’s an undercurrent of tension in the enthusiasm–balancing the grim reality of the storm with an unshakable grip on the hope of what comes after.

I Died Laughing will be out 4/24 via Snappy Little Numbers. Pre-orders are available here. The band will be matching donations on 20% of pre-order sales for Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. From the band:

“The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) is a statewide membership-based coalition of immigrant, faith, labor, youth, and ally organizations founded in 2002 to build a unified statewide voice to improve the lives of immigrants and refugees in Colorado and the United States. CIRC achieves its mission through non-partisan civic engagement, public education and policy advocacy to win humane and workable immigration policies at the local, state and federal level.”

We believe this mission is important now more than ever, as immigrants in the US have been cut out of provisions to aid with relief during COVID-19. (www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/covid-19-doesnt-discriminate-neither-should-congress-response/)”

Released by Snappy Little Numbers.
Mixing and drum recording by Corey Coffman.
Mastering by Sun Room Audio.
Production and album artwork by Lauren Beecher.

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Keegan Bradford | @franziamom


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