College of Idiots: Ginger's iPod: Broken Bells

I don't purchase many new albums. In a rock music landscape full of self-loathing, skinny jeans and makeup wearing hipsters, it's hard to find anything new and good these days. The last album I bought that I thought was worth a damn was the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "It's Blitz". But I recently found something worthy enough to add into my regular rotation.

Broken Bells self-titled debut album came out this Tuesday and through the urging of many of the "music" guys at EOC I picked it up and haven't put it down. The duo consists of the Shins frontman, James Mercer, and hit-maker extraordinaire, Brian Baker aka DJ Danger Mouse, who has worked with a variety of artists from Beck to Gorillaz to the Black Keys. He is most notably known for another paired partnership with Cee-Lo Green in the group Gnarls Barkley.

So what does it sound like when a progressive producer and the lead singer/songwriter of a pop friendly get together? Surprisingly the result is a melodic, beat heavy, chorus driven style that is as catchy as it is fresh. But I'm really not that good at all this review stuff, so let's let Rolling Stone describe the album:

It turns out the two pop-science geeks are a perfect match. Danger Mouse pushes Mercer's gorgeous, existential tunecraft outward with Day-Glo dynamics. "'Cause they know, and so do I/The high road is hard to find," Mercer sings on the opening chorus of Bells. The lyrics are about the loneliness of decision-making — they may refer to life in the trenches of normalcy, or, perhaps, to Mercer's recent professional decisions (he more or less fired two members of the Shins). But what sweeps you up are the sweet, ascending verses, the rolling chorus and the Danger Mouse touches: analog-synth swirls, slo-mo kick drums, a melancholy bass line — hip-hop for turned-on shut-ins.

Cool variations on the Gnarls formula — Danger and a quirkily excellent singer making arty, transcultural pop — run throughout the album. "Vaporize" begins with Mercer's fey workaday voice and a strummed acoustic, then takes off with smeared snares, bouncy organ and a jaunty Bacharach-David-style horn break. It's punchier than the Shins, and livelier than you'd expect from a song whose title suggests innovative marijuana consumption — an anthem of solidarity for malcontents, teenage and otherwise, not unlike "Crazy." The catchy, midtempo "The Ghost Inside" even has Mercer singing in a T-Pained falsetto — it's not hard to imagine it on the hit parade, along with the soaring, U2-flavored "October."

Broken Bells isn't all crossover ambition. Tracks like "Your Head Is on Fire" — a drum-machine space waltz floating between Syd Barrett and something from Brian Eno's Another Green World — won't make the short list of Glee covers. But with a new Shins record reportedly brewing, Mercer seems to be following some of the instructions in his own songs: Life is short, brother — go for it. The introverted indie guy isn't gone, and he's still not afraid to tell you that we're ultimately alone on this journey. "If you want to follow me, you should know," he sings. "I was lost then/And I'm lost now/And I doubt I'll ever know which way to go." Maybe. But for the moment, in Danger Mouse, Mercer has found a promising fellow traveler.

If you like anything that Danger Mouse has produced, this is a definite purchase. It's not so much the Shins as it as genius record sung (and co-wrote) by the guy from the Shins. I picked up the MP3 CD off amazon.com for $4.99 (unfortunately it is now back to regular pricing), which made it even a better deal. If you're one of those "oldies" that want's something tangible, swing by your local record store, or pick it while getting picking up your coffee at Starbucks you fucking hipster.