by Cole Makuch
Every artist’s catalog, by some point in time, will have a beginning, middle, and end. For Broadcast, the beginning was home-grown kraut-inspired recordings in the wake of ‘90s contemporaries Stereolab and Pram. The middle offered some of the most prolific mid-2000s alternative electronica releases, including breakthrough record Haha Sound and the stripped-down follow-up Tender Buttons. And the end, as if the turntable needle lifted mid-song, Mother is The Milky Way: a tour-only CD release created for the group’s final tour, shortly followed by the passing of singer Trish Keenan.
Mother is The Milky Way is not quite a collection of songs and not quite a soundtrack. Rather, it is a twenty-minute meditative experience in an unambiguously Broadcastian space, with equal parts journey through pastoral psychedelic meadows and whiplash-inducing descent into some of the darkest spaces the band has dared to curate. In times of consonance, lullaby-like melodies vacillate in and out of focus to silky acoustic guitars and birds chirping. In dissonance, reeling synthesizers and atonal saxophone create intensely ominous atmospheres reminiscent of the band’s heady sixties psych influences. The journey is rocky and sometimes terrifying, but through it all Keenan’s voice warmly breaks the haze like a glowing beacon.
In line with the group’s later soundtrack pursuits, the EP lacks the hooky, pop-structured songwriting of their mid-career material, instead offering a freeform sonic journey that emerges the listener straight into a strange world of field recordings and reverb. It is some of Broadcast’s most dynamic work, illustrating their masterful ability to scene-set and maintain a characteristic presence even in varied and unsteady sonic environments. It is also some of the group’s most comfortable-in-their-own-skin material, as if they finally had the platform and ability to make the music they’d like to listen to, perhaps due to the intended low-stakes, fans-only audience for the original release. In this sense, for fans, Mother is The Milky Way is a window into a private place, a chance to experience the sonic equivalent of their favorite painter’s sketchbook and palette. And for those unfamiliar with Broadcast, consider it a bite-sized preview of one of the most compelling musical voices of the last thirty years.