Escaping From Birmingham with Broadcast’s ‘Haha Sound’
When I was a teenager, Birmingham was my go-to location for finding CDs and DVDs that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Even though the commute – a bus (always later than advertised) to Lichfield City train station, followed by a train into New Street – was a pretty cumbersome Saturday time sink, I knew it would be worth it for the riches awaiting me at either Swordfish Records or the gargantuan multi-floor HMV. The HMV in particular (which, incidentally, is now a gargantuan multi-floor Primark) was where I was first introduced to so much of the foundational art that got me obsessed with music and film in the first place; from stumbling across The Glow, pt. 2 by The Microphones there, to the many days I’d spend staring intimidated at the cover of Eraserhead before finally caving in and buying it.
Neither of those spring immediately to mind when I think about the gigantic HMV, though. The first memory that I associate with it is actually a little CD display I once saw in there when I was about 16 or 17. It was labelled “Local Legends”, and housed albums by all the usual suspects: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, UB40, The Specials (technically Coventry but, sure, why not). There was one specific thing that really struck me about that display though, and it was what wasn’t there. There was one great yawning and unforgivable black hole.
There Was No Broadcast.
Broadcast were, at this point in my life, possibly my favourite band. They represented a thrilling cross-section of everything that I’d found really, really interesting when getting into music. Their songwriting was, like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth’s, a fantastic blend of the infectiously catchy and the compellingly idiosyncratic; their approach to sampling and electronics spoke to those elements that thrilled me about hip-hop production and the heady electronic music of the Warp Records roster. Needless to say, I was outraged by this glaring omission from the coveted, sacred hall of “Local Legends”: I had half a mind to walk over to the A to Z aisles of CDs and individually move all the Broadcast albums into the display myself. Even at that age, though, I had a sense of the value of my own labour – either that, or I was scared of the security staff coming over and asking me what on earth I thought I was doing.
Looking back now as a 33-year-old man who still can’t grow proper facial hair, I find the whole thing a lot easier to get my head around. For one thing, Broadcast were and still are far less well-known in the mainstream than any of those other bands; furthermore, all of those bands are far easier to link to Birmingham’s history and to the city’s never-ending crusade to present itself to the wider world as “not that bad, actually”. The whole genre of heavy metal, for example, links pretty directly to Birmingham’s industrial heritage; and the 2-Tone / reggae scene from which UB40 and The Specials emerged speaks to the city’s rich social history.
Broadcast, on the other hand, are more often spoken of in terms of the influences they drew from far outside the city limits: the American psychedelic rock band The United States of America, for example, who provided the blueprint for Broadcast’s early sound; or works of European horror and surrealist cinema like Suspiria or Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. There’s a case to be made, in fact, that Broadcast’s whole sound is a very conscious and deliberate attempt to distance themselves and escape from their home city. As frontwoman Trish Keenan herself said in a 2009 interview with Wire: “in the late eighties, I was obsessed with the kitchen sink idea of the 60s, I felt umbilically connected with it because of my upbringing […but then] I discovered psychedelia and it seemed to have self help properties that allowed me to let go of an immobilising working class pride that was cementing a false identity into my psyche.”
This sense of escapism – whether into the soundtracks of 60s science-fiction and spy films, the pages of esoteric literature, or the uncharted vistas of psychedelia and surrealism – is clear to see from the band’s inception, but it’s particularly present on their second album: 2003’s Haha Sound. Sandwiched between the more measured cinematic torch songs of their debut, The Noise Made By People, and the skeletal post-punk of 2005’s Tender Buttons, Haha Sound is the most overtly psychedelic and escapist-sounding of Broadcast’s three mainline albums. Its sound is a kaleidoscopic sprawl of 60s chamber pop, clattering jazz percussion, avant-garde electronics, and dreamlike psychedelia. What I find most interesting and enduring about it however is the fact that Haha Sound is as much about what Broadcast are escaping from as where they’re escaping to.
The album’s opening track ‘Colour Me In’ introduces the album with a blast of industrial noise – a mechanistic clatter and a hissing release of pressure, like a factory shutting down for the day – before Keenan’s voice invites us to look beyond the monochrome drabness of the everyday:
“I am grey, still on the page
Oh, colour me in.
Just an outline, sketchy but fine
Oh, colour me in.”
This tug-of-war between mundanity and the exciting vistas of imagination runs throughout the whole album. Lyrically, Broadcast’s psychedelia is a far cry from the hedonistic boundlessness of the Laurel Canyon scene – it is instead a desperately sought alternative to the drudgery of city life. You can hear this in relatable vignettes about letting your mind wander during a lunch break, as on ‘Lunch Hour Pops’; or in a song about hyperfixating on some old heirloom with sentimental value (“why do you leave me so confused?” Keenan asks of a broken wooden clock, on ‘The Little Bell’, “I’ll miss my bus, my job I’ll lose”); or, as on ‘Valerie’, it may simply be a case of being so tired that dreams take the wheel (“I fall to sleep before closing my eyes, tiredness draws in my head a cartoon”).
Sonically too, there’s a harshness throughout Haha Sound that pulls even the most lush and otherworldly of instrumental textures down towards the grit of a dirty pavement. A degraded and crushed-sounding digital roughness, as if you’re straining your ears to hear the haunting science-fiction organs of ‘Before We Begin’ or the droning strings at the end of ‘Valerie’ over the chatter of the office, the bustle of the rush hour train home, or the blare of a neighbour’s television.
The way in which the album oscillates in this way between melancholic weariness and hopeful wonder situates Haha Sound within a broad canon of cultural endeavours that have used Birmingham – a city so often derided as dull and artless – as a jumping-off point for enduring flights of fancy. Alongside J. R. R. Tolkien invoking the city’s smokestacks and factories in his vision of evil in The Lord of the Rings, for example, or Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi pioneering his distinctive guitar playing style after suffering from an industrial accident, Broadcast offer an escape from the labyrinth of private developments that so many cities are fast becoming: a momentary exit that reminds us that the heart of any city lies within the dreaming, hoping, living minds that inhabit it.
“I’ve got to find a place.
Be myself and learn to face the ominous clouds.”
Broadcast, ‘Ominous Cloud’
Neither of those spring immediately to mind when I think about the gigantic HMV, though. The first memory that I associate with it is actually a little CD display I once saw in there when I was about 16 or 17. It was labelled “Local Legends”, and housed albums by all the usual suspects: Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, UB40, The Specials (technically Coventry but, sure, why not). There was one specific thing that really struck me about that display though, and it was what wasn’t there. There was one great yawning and unforgivable black hole.
There Was No Broadcast.
Broadcast were, at this point in my life, possibly my favourite band. They represented a thrilling cross-section of everything that I’d found really, really interesting when getting into music. Their songwriting was, like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth’s, a fantastic blend of the infectiously catchy and the compellingly idiosyncratic; their approach to sampling and electronics spoke to those elements that thrilled me about hip-hop production and the heady electronic music of the Warp Records roster. Needless to say, I was outraged by this glaring omission from the coveted, sacred hall of “Local Legends”: I had half a mind to walk over to the A to Z aisles of CDs and individually move all the Broadcast albums into the display myself. Even at that age, though, I had a sense of the value of my own labour – either that, or I was scared of the security staff coming over and asking me what on earth I thought I was doing.
Looking back now as a 33-year-old man who still can’t grow proper facial hair, I find the whole thing a lot easier to get my head around. For one thing, Broadcast were and still are far less well-known in the mainstream than any of those other bands; furthermore, all of those bands are far easier to link to Birmingham’s history and to the city’s never-ending crusade to present itself to the wider world as “not that bad, actually”. The whole genre of heavy metal, for example, links pretty directly to Birmingham’s industrial heritage; and the 2-Tone / reggae scene from which UB40 and The Specials emerged speaks to the city’s rich social history.
Broadcast, on the other hand, are more often spoken of in terms of the influences they drew from far outside the city limits: the American psychedelic rock band The United States of America, for example, who provided the blueprint for Broadcast’s early sound; or works of European horror and surrealist cinema like Suspiria or Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. There’s a case to be made, in fact, that Broadcast’s whole sound is a very conscious and deliberate attempt to distance themselves and escape from their home city. As frontwoman Trish Keenan herself said in a 2009 interview with Wire: “in the late eighties, I was obsessed with the kitchen sink idea of the 60s, I felt umbilically connected with it because of my upbringing […but then] I discovered psychedelia and it seemed to have self help properties that allowed me to let go of an immobilising working class pride that was cementing a false identity into my psyche.”
This sense of escapism – whether into the soundtracks of 60s science-fiction and spy films, the pages of esoteric literature, or the uncharted vistas of psychedelia and surrealism – is clear to see from the band’s inception, but it’s particularly present on their second album: 2003’s Haha Sound. Sandwiched between the more measured cinematic torch songs of their debut, The Noise Made By People, and the skeletal post-punk of 2005’s Tender Buttons, Haha Sound is the most overtly psychedelic and escapist-sounding of Broadcast’s three mainline albums. Its sound is a kaleidoscopic sprawl of 60s chamber pop, clattering jazz percussion, avant-garde electronics, and dreamlike psychedelia. What I find most interesting and enduring about it however is the fact that Haha Sound is as much about what Broadcast are escaping from as where they’re escaping to.
The album’s opening track ‘Colour Me In’ introduces the album with a blast of industrial noise – a mechanistic clatter and a hissing release of pressure, like a factory shutting down for the day – before Keenan’s voice invites us to look beyond the monochrome drabness of the everyday:
“I am grey, still on the page
Oh, colour me in.
Just an outline, sketchy but fine
Oh, colour me in.”
This tug-of-war between mundanity and the exciting vistas of imagination runs throughout the whole album. Lyrically, Broadcast’s psychedelia is a far cry from the hedonistic boundlessness of the Laurel Canyon scene – it is instead a desperately sought alternative to the drudgery of city life. You can hear this in relatable vignettes about letting your mind wander during a lunch break, as on ‘Lunch Hour Pops’; or in a song about hyperfixating on some old heirloom with sentimental value (“why do you leave me so confused?” Keenan asks of a broken wooden clock, on ‘The Little Bell’, “I’ll miss my bus, my job I’ll lose”); or, as on ‘Valerie’, it may simply be a case of being so tired that dreams take the wheel (“I fall to sleep before closing my eyes, tiredness draws in my head a cartoon”).
Sonically too, there’s a harshness throughout Haha Sound that pulls even the most lush and otherworldly of instrumental textures down towards the grit of a dirty pavement. A degraded and crushed-sounding digital roughness, as if you’re straining your ears to hear the haunting science-fiction organs of ‘Before We Begin’ or the droning strings at the end of ‘Valerie’ over the chatter of the office, the bustle of the rush hour train home, or the blare of a neighbour’s television.
The way in which the album oscillates in this way between melancholic weariness and hopeful wonder situates Haha Sound within a broad canon of cultural endeavours that have used Birmingham – a city so often derided as dull and artless – as a jumping-off point for enduring flights of fancy. Alongside J. R. R. Tolkien invoking the city’s smokestacks and factories in his vision of evil in The Lord of the Rings, for example, or Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi pioneering his distinctive guitar playing style after suffering from an industrial accident, Broadcast offer an escape from the labyrinth of private developments that so many cities are fast becoming: a momentary exit that reminds us that the heart of any city lies within the dreaming, hoping, living minds that inhabit it.
“I’ve got to find a place.
Be myself and learn to face the ominous clouds.”
Broadcast, ‘Ominous Cloud’