"Kissing the Lipless" just isn't cutting it anymore for fans of The Shins, so James Mercer teamed up with Danger Mouse (Gnarls Barkley; producer of The Grey Album, Gorillaz' Demon Days and Beck's Modern Guilt) in a group called Broken Bells. Well, actually Mercer teamed up with Brian Burton, who has gone all Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson on us by ditching his "Danger Mouse" nickname for this group. In any event, Broken Bells' self-titled album has a sound that significantly detours from The Shins (except for perhaps the acoustic guitar-based "Vaporize"), but Mercer stays true to his enigmatic lyrics, which clearly have a deep meaning that I don't understand. Broken Bells have pushed an excellent single, "The High Road," but they don't find their character in the album until "The Ghost Inside," an upbeat loop track where Mercer sings mostly like a falsetto diva and then breaks in with his natural voice, creating a kind of faux duet. But the real breakthroughs come at the close of the album, where Mercer and Danger Mouse become the Quentin Tarantino's of indie rock, composing a hilariously macho section in "Mongrel Heart" which sounds straight out of a western film. My personal favorite is the final song, "The Mall and Misery" where Broken Bells make the best out of strings, synthesizers and Modest Mouse-inspired electric guitars, proving that Broken Bells is a marriage of two great styles.
