Broadcast’s demos, Broadcast’s demons: a fragile treasure trove
(NB: I wrote this piece in October 2023 before the news of the two Broadcast demo albums, Spell Blanket and Distant Call, was announced. Needless to say, I am madly excited about the two records.)
September 28 2023 would have been the 55th birthday of Broadcast singer Trish Keenan, who died in January 2011. Broadcast were critical darlings in their time but — as Trish told me in 2005 — “We get good reviews but nobody buys it.” Following her death, the influence of Broadcast has grown exponentially and James Cargill, the band’s other founding member, has done an excellent job of keeping Trish in the public memory, releasing demos to his Soundcloud account to mark Trish’s birthday.
This year, however, there was news on the band’s Facebook page. “Since Trish’s untimely passing in 2011, James has continued to remember her by sharing unreleased Broadcast demos each year on her birthday, September 28th. In the spirit of those birthday demos Broadcast present ‘Spell Blanket — Collected Demos 2006–2009.’ The collection comprises songs and sketches drawn from Trish’s extensive archive of 4-track tapes and minidiscs. The recordings lay the groundwork for what would have been Broadcast’s fifth album, offering an intimate window into the creative process of Trish and James during this period post Tender Buttons. ‘Spell Blanket — Collected Demos 2006–2009’ will be released via Warp Records in early 2024.”
Since the news broke, I have been listening intensively to the nine demos that Cargill has shared to date, which you can hear on his Soundcloud page or helpfully rounded up on YouTube. And I decided to share my thoughts on this fragile treasure trove.
The Song Before the Song Comes Out
James Cargill hasn’t provided much biographical detail about the demos he has released on Trish’s birthday and — on the whole — they don’t need it. But it would be fascinating to know more about this 40-second demo, which he posted to Soundcloud 12 years ago. iI features Trish singing, unaccompanied and slightly out of breath, a winding folky melody that, as far as I know it, has nothing to do with Broadcast and the Focus Group’s 2010 song The Song Before. It could, perhaps, be a very young Trish — there is a certain very charming naivety to the melody — but it is impossible to say. Whatever the case, the song is entirely self contained and totally endearing, a melody that seems to float in and away on the cool breeze of a sunny day.
The second oldest demo is this distorted two-minute recording of Trish reading Lewis Carrol’s Jabberwocky, a nonsense poem from Alice Through The Looking Glass. Keenan’s love of Alice in Wonderland was well known — Cargill even named his post-Broadcast project Children Of Alice in recognition of this — so the reading matter isn’t a revelation. But Keenan reads the poem with all the enthusiastic drama of a true devotee and it is heart-warming to hear her Birmingham accent — almost entirely absent when she sang — come peaking through.
Tears In The Typing Pool (demo 2004)
Tears in the Typing Pool, from Tender Buttons, is — perhaps surprisingly — Broadcast’s second most popular song on Spotify. The version of the song on that album is a sparse beast but this scratchy demo strips it back even further, to just Keenan, scanty guitar chords and the slightest suggestion of backing vocals and keyboard melody. It feels so incredibly intimate, I think I might prefer it.
The demo version of Goodbye Girls, another Tender Buttons track, was released on September 28 2014, the same day as the Tears In The Typing Pool demo, and it offers a similar experience, stripping the song back to its roots without fundamentally changing its nature. Goodbye Girls is probably one of Keenan’s most person songs. When I interviewed her in 2005 she said of the song, “I imagine what it’s like to be a prostitute, what you have to turn off inside to do it. To a certain degree it’s a description of my mum. She has a blankness to her some times. There’s reasons she ended up as a prostitute.”
It is revelatory to hear a version of the song where you feel so very close to Keenan, in the demo’s lo-fi glory. Tender Buttons shocked many Broadcast fans when it was released in 2005 by moving away from the guitar-driven style of previous albums, in favour of minimal drum machines and angry keyboards. If I remember rightly, the duo initially planned to use the drum machines and synths as place holders until they could re-work the material with a full band but decided they liked the results so much they would keep them. And, listening to the savage, emotionally sharp demo of Goodbye Girls, you can understand why.
Tunnel View, which has only ever been released in demo form, might be my favourite of the birthday releases: three minutes of perfectly haunting folk melody that gives me all kinds of chills, just Trish, acoustic guitar, atmospheric fuzz and one of her best melodies, topped off with the slightest trace of flamenco guitar trill. Again, it would be fascinating to know a bit more about this song — perhaps Spell Blanket will oblige — but Tunnel View could have fit flawlessly onto any of the Broadcast albums, which is a serious compliment. The lyrics — which Cargill posted to his blog — are lovely too, a strange world of cosmic expressionism and brilliant turn of phrase, whose meaning hangs ever so slightly out of our grasp: “Follow the owl map instruction / Shrink and expand according to the tunnel view.”
Cargill posted Petal Alphabet to his Soundcloud in 2018 but it is no longer available there, which suggests it may turn up on Spell Blanket (you can still hear it on YouTube). Was this, then, an indication of what Broadcast’s fifth album would have sounded like? (And, incidentally, what was their fourth? 2009 collab Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age? Or 2013 soundtrack Berberian Sound Studio?) Or was Petal Alphabet a loose demo?
Whatever the case, the song reprises the acoustic guitar and layered voice effect we hear on several of the demos here, but sounds noticeably more angular, upbeat, psychedelic and even poppy, like those early Syd Barrett songs with Pink Floyd (think Bike) that were simultaneously very weird and strangely straightforward. Petal Alphabet is a Broadcast ear worm, from the Come On, Let’s Go / America’s Boy school.
Colour Me In is one of my all-time favourite Broadcast songs, a hypnotic and slightly sickly beast that opens the band’s second studio album Haha Sound. This 2001 demo dials back the off-tune, found-sound strangeness of the album version to showcase the song’s sweetly alluring melody. Although I still prefer the Haha Sound version. Again, this demo is not on Soundcloud but you can hear it on YouTube.
Where Are You? (4 track demo 2002)
Posted by Cargill in 2020, Where Are You? is perhaps the only birthday demo that sounds like it needs a little something more to weave its magic. The song is still lovely — how could anything in Trish’s voice not be? — but compared to Tunnel View or Petal Alphabet, this two-chord stroll, with just a hint of piano, sounds a bit underdeveloped.
Distant Call was originally released as the B side to Come On, Let’s Go back in 2000, before coming out again on The Future Crayon compilation. The difference to the single’s celebrated A side is marked: while Come On, Let’s Go is a graceful, rolling pop song, Distant Call is downbeat, largely drum-free and slightly warped, like jazz for being alone at the end of the universe. The demo version, meanwhile, is pretty illuminating, in that it not only strips the song down to guitar and voice, it also has a slightly different melody. One commentator on YouTube compares it to early Leonard Cohen, which feels pretty spot on. Whether you prefer it to the recorded version — and I can’t work out if I do — it gives off a very different atmosphere, making it a Distant Call for dreamy heads and quiet tears.
Ominous Cloud (4 Track Demo 2001)
Ominous Cloud is another Haha Sound track that appears here in bare demo form. Keenan compared the band’s second album to “a jewellery box, full of sparkling things” when I interviewed her, with Tender Buttons a reaction to this. The two Haha Sound demos give the listener the opportunity to hear HaHa Sound songs un-jewelled, which is fascinating, although, again, I prefer Ominous Cloud all dolled up. The best thing on this demo, perhaps, is hearing Keenan’s backing vocals in embryonic form, pitched down, wonky and, honestly, rather out of tune. But charmingly so, like being invited back to the Broadcast house for a cup of tea and informal jam after the glitz of the concert has ended.
