Broken Records, KOKO, 12th June

Now this is one well formulated, highly educated and superiorly crafted outfit we have here. The multi-instrumentalists that are Broken Records hail from Scotland’s more, well, cultured side of the track I suppose. Their hometown of Edinburgh is best know for it’s illustrious castles’ that cascade the city’s skyline, the distinctly enriching arts festival that inhabits the city for one month of every year and, well, not having such a high rate of knife crime and teenage pregnancy as its sister city that lies at the country’s baseline.

And it’s this fine-wine and prolific literature upbringing that could be responsible for the illustrious outcome of the operatic and diversely anthemic tendencies of Broken Records. As the seven-piece hit the stage at around 12.30am it seems only right that their eerie indie-folk showcases its instrumental unity at the midnight hour.


The bands debut, “Until The World Begins To Part”, encapsulates a variety of musky and marvellous moods with genuine flashes of brilliance throughout that are certainly far from absent in their live recital. Although appearing a minor bleak in parts, it really doesn’t come across as such an affair. The tremendously uplifting “If The News Makes You Sad…” aluminates the ghostly glaze of a band whose mysteriously ironic presence is in fact not what it first appears. They’re chirpy chaps who bob around the stage like restless Arcade Fire offspring,. Their collective rendition of “Lies” is uncanny to its lingering spookiness felt on the record, and as accordion and violin unite in the diverse proceedings its quite clear that their begrimed acoustics are erroneous to the seemingly apocalyptic song-matter.

After around forty five minutes of their organised poetic-ramblings, front man Jamie Sutherland and his bandmates begin to bring the goings-on to a close. And if one thing’s apparent it’s this - the live performance is a well oiled and thoroughly tested friend of Broken records. Where their album had shimmers of intensity and lucid greatness their were also cracks in the sometimes patchily plastered creation, but here it was a different tale altogether. Their ghostly-folk meets indie-opera showed little signs of stagnancy,and when all seven members verbalized as one it shone through with enigma, an undeniable air of atmospheric cultured-rock and an incontestable binding of completeness.