TITLE: Broken Bells
ARTIST: Broken Bells
RECORD LABEL: Columbia
RELEASED: March 9

TITLE: Dark Knight of the Soul
ARTIST: Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse
RECORD LABEL: Capitol Records
RELEASE: July 13

By Chris Kromphardt
Staff Writer, Justice Administrator

One is already a stand-out album of 2010. The other was just released July 13, despite being originally slated to come out—and leaking—back in 2009. Their common denominator: producer/self-proclaimed auteur Danger Mouse.

In a 2006 interview with Chuck Klosterman, Danger Mouse—who at the time had been producing Demon Days with the Gorillaz and St. Elsewhere as Gnarls Barkley along with Cee-Lo—likened his approach to producing to writer-director Woody Allen’s approach to filmmaking. Mouse describes an epiphany he had after watching several of Allen’s films: “‘Why do I relate so much to this white 60-year-old Jewish guy? Why do I understand his neurosis?…And what I realized is that they worked because Woody Allen was an auteur.’” Danger Mouse sought to emulate this creative approach as he says no other music producer has, envisioning his role in producing—directing—musicians as guiding them so as to realize the singular conception that is in his head.

Danger Mouse’s producing role enables him to work on numerous projects with multiple artists at a pace any one musician would be crazy to try to match. Earlier this year another Danger Mouse-produced album, Brothers by the Black Keys, was released. His polygamous approach to musicmaking provides a lot of music to sift through to assess his claim of being an auteur.

Broken Bells is the self-titled release by the duo of Danger Mouse and singer James Mercer of The Shins. (Mercer also appears in a track on Dark Night of the Soul, ”Insane Lullaby”, actually predating Broken Bells). It helps to think of Mercer as the lead actor; DeNiro to Mouse’s Scorcese. His work with The Shins was good but often repetitive, whereas Broken Bells sees Mercer demonstrating much greater range. “The Ghost Inside” is a great example of layered vocals; all of them are Mercer’s, some in falsetto, some not.

Danger Mouse lays the foundation with a catchy syncopation, and numerous audible flourishes seamlessly accompany Mercer’s alternating singing styles. A talented producer working with a clear vision and a versatile leading man makes Broken Bells an album you’ll actually want to listen through in its entirety—and if you’re like me, many, many times—because each song’s fresh and yet part of a cohesive whole.

Dark Night of the Soul sees a lot more people thrown into the mix, including an actual director, David Lynch (Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks). Lynch himself could be considered an auteur, given that his work exemplifies the leitmotif of being pretty messed up. Most tracks are performed by different artists, including The Flaming Lips, Black Francis, Julian Casablancas, Mercer, and Iggy Pop (Lynch provides some vocals as well); as a result it’s hard to assess Danger Mouse’s role—if any—as an auteur, especially because he shares credit with Sparklehorse.

Talking about Dark Night, he said: “As we finished the songs with the various artists, we started to notice some interesting patterns…We’d never given specific direction to any of the singers involved, nor had we played them any of the other songs on the album. Yet there seemed to be common themes in the lyrics and feel of the songs. There was pain, revenge, war, twisted dreams and other beautifully haunting visual aspects to it all.”

Dark Night of the Soul doesn’t suffer from lack of vision in the slightest, but it’s one where all of the parts are key; it’s collaborative. The change in style from song to song does create an ambiance of delirium, and as accompanied by the booklet of photographs that’s Lynch’s handiwork, the album’s a pretty harrowing experience.

So what conclusions can we draw from Broken Bells and Dark Night of the Soul about Danger Mouse’s auteur aspirations? The former is a clear example of such a theory, while the latter is more of an accidental one. Danger Mouse doesn’t just produce singles—in fact, he leaves the singing and a lot of lyric writing to the musicians. So, because it seems, short of consulting a director’s commentary, that it’s difficult to discern Danger Mouse’s role on individual tracks, perhaps it’s wise to evaluate his body of work on whole albums; both Broken Bells and Dark Night of the Soul exhibit album-wide vision.

Or to put another way: Woody Allen? Meet Danger Mouse.

RATINGS:
Broken Bells: 9.5/10
Dark Night of the Soul: 8/10

Front page image from vitalicnoise.com.