Broadcast - Tender Buttons LP

Broadcast are a band that existed somewhere in my peripheral vision for a long time but there weren't any signifiers that they'd be of any interest to me. One day a friend was playing this album in the car and I was taken back, "Wait, THIS is what Broadcast sound like???'' As they were acclaimed by the British music press my contrarian young brain assumed they had to be a middling indie band. It feels good to be wrong. Tender Buttons is fantastic, up there with Boy In Da Corner best of the noughties. A resourceful approach to pasting the playful electronic experimentation of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop onto the skeleton of Young Marble Giants and pastoral '60s pop. While there certainly was a wave of Austin Powers adjacent '60 kitsch going on at the time, this isn't that. Affecting, intimate, interesting, and far from middling! - Nic