“Rain”
from the album The Broken String
2007
iTunes
MP3 – “Rain” [right-click/save-as]
2006 was a big year for Bishop Allen. The band — composed of New York City borough dwelling co-frontmen Justin Rice and Christian Rudder and drummer Jack Delamitraux — recorded and self-released an EP every month of the year. Fifty-eight songs later, they completed one of the most ambitious recording projects in recent memory. Their 2003 debut, Charm School, was a hooky indie-pop gem, but Bishop Allen’s EP material proves far more sophisticated and addictive. With the EPs, Bishop Allen’s pop smarts sound timeless, escaping the indie-pop idiom and revealing a language informed by the Kinks, Dylan, and the Zombies.
But it was never Bishop Allen’s intent to forgo a label for the long term, and in early 2007 the band struck a partnership with Dead Oceans, a new Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar label affiliate. The first fruit of this relationship is Bishop Allen’s sophomore album, The Broken String, Dead Ocean’s inaugural release due July 24. If Bishop Allen made a huge musical jump from the 2003 debut to the 2006 EPs, the band made a quantum leap on The Broken String. Of its twelve songs, nine are reworked tracks from the EPs and two are previously unreleased.
These are not just re-recordings: Bishop Allen has stepped out of the home studio and created definitive versions of songs that were originally conceived within the constraints of a monthly deadline. Benefiting from the earlier recordings and several tours, the songs’ arrangements have grown, the production is lush, the lyrics are front and center, and the band’s evolution has reached a new level. The Broken String is the follow-up for which Bishop Allen fans have long clamored. The Broken String is not just a great record by Bishop Allen standards. It is poised to be the pop soundtrack to the summer of 2007.