Release Date: August 22, 2011
Should MTV Scandinavia give the award for Bewildering Album of the Year, I Break Horses’ debut Hearts would take the cake.
Maria Lindén and Fredrik Balck have spent a better part of the last three years in Stockholm putting together the nine-track album, Hearts, as well as two music videos. With marked influences including My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and The Jesus and Mary Chain, the duo has learned the ropes of shoegazing from some of the very best. Lindén previously said that she always loved the Smog song “I Break Horses,” yet despite the band’s name, Smog was not necessarily a major musical influence. According to The Iceberg (an art project focusing on finding truth in artists’ work through interviews — including topics of song lyrics and band names), “Seeing it [I Break Horses] written down, within the more abstract context of a band name, it seemed to be nicely ambiguous. Some names tell you what kind of music you’re getting, and I liked the fact that ‘I Break Horses’ didn’t at all. It also didn’t feel like a pretentious name, so it was a fairly straightforward choice.”
If “nicely ambiguous” is what they were going for, undoubtedly, it was achieved. Despite an enigmatic surge, an overarching carnal and earthly theme is strung throughout the album, especially with song titles “Pulse,” “Hearts,” “Cancer” and “Wired.” Lindén’s ghostly, reverberant vocals bring warmness to otherwise cold and mechanical instrumentals.
The couple has a striking ability to make all the songs sound different — which is a feat in itself with any shoegazer band. Just when you expect the song to continue on its seemingly endless path of hollow crooning and repetitive beats, a handful of the songs (“Hearts” and “Load Your Eyes”) take a surprising and welcomed change when least expected.
In addition to the debut album, the band also released a couple of music videos. In collaboration with director Alex Southam (aka “Oof”), videos for “Hearts” and “Winter Beats” are an enchanting balance of visual pleasure and obscure imagery. The video for “Hearts” brings the song to life with choppy, yet stunning, film splices of mountain and pasture landscapes. Movement is an apparent theme with the lake water, clouds and roadside in constant motion. Whether the video brings more clarity to the song’s meaning, however, is still up for debate. “Winter Beats” has a familiar Oof-ness (lots of time-lapsed clouds) with a mix of quirky images that could only parallel Donnie Darko. Both videos can be viewed on the band’s website. Again, neither video lets listeners in on the secrets of the songs’ meaning. But, alas, plenty of pretty visuals are in store.
Despite nearly indecipherable lyrics and disconcerting videos, the album as a whole earns its weight in redeeming qualities: Its unconventional composition of cold and warm, light and dark, soft and hard are curious and alluring. This isn’t the kind of album you would listen to for motivation or for staying awake on a cross-country road trip. No, you also won’t hear any of these songs on the playlist while whirling around the rinks at Skate World. I Break Horses is not that kind of band. Listeners, instead, are more likely to discover a parallel universe with their naked eye or bend spoons with their brains than dance to or decipher the lyrics of these songs. Hearts is a thinking album; or perhaps good background music for a creative endeavor or for a party at the very end of the night.
The band is signed with Bella Union, an independent, artist-run label that also has released music from Fleet Foxes, Andrew Bird, Explosions in the Sky and Wavves, among many others.
I Break Horses — Hearts Tracklist:
- “Winter Beats”
- “Hearts”
- “Wired”
- “I Kill Your Love, Baby”
- “Pulse”
- “Cancer”
- “Load Your Eyes”
- “Empty Bottles”
- “No Way Outro”
