I Break Horses - Hearts

After the recent barrage of beautiful sounding Nordic acts to cross the channel and sweep British audiophiles into a frenzy of hushed electronic fandom – see Niki & The Dove, The Radio Dept. and Lykke Li – the latest Swedish act to enter the awareness of these aforementioned aficionados is Bella Union’s latest signing I Break Horses, the moniker of shoegaze revivalist duo Fredrik Balck and Maria Lindén.

Since the beginning of the year, the pair has been creating waves amongst the UK music industry and rightly so, with Lindén and Balck proving their worth with gradually released trickles of songs and snippets of videos, teasing with their electronic tinged splendour. This month sees the eventual release of the duo’s debut album ‘Hearts’, and with the evident perfection of the nine songs that make up the release, it won’t be long before I Break Horses break into people’s musical consciousness completely and whole-heartedly.

One of the ‘Hearts’s many strengths is how very different each of its nine tracks is from one another: an obvious thing to say, perhaps, but an attribute that doesn’t lend itself to as many recorded outputs as it should. Yet among this aura of variance is a track transition process that allows each song to segue into one another seamlessly. The best example on display is the first two tracks, which are so flawlessly flowing that it could, and almost should, be one continuous eight-minute track. Indeed these two tracks, ‘Winter Beats’ followed on by title-track ‘Hearts’ are amongst the very best on the album, and as such it’s almost difficult to get past them and stop hitting repeat. Pulsing and incredible, both tracks display everything that make I Break Horses so special, and indeed set them apart from their musical peers, from irresistible looping melodies through to powerful synthetic drumbeats and consuming electronics.

Another of ‘Hearts’, and indeed the duo’s strengths lies in Lindén’s diverse vocals. Interchanging and omnipresent, her voice is the constant throughout the release: where bass lines and keys transform and mutate from song to song, Lindén’s soprano notes flow endlessly, yet distinctively softly in the background. For this is another of I Break Horses’ trademarks, the fact that although vocals are one of the main characteristics within their songs, volume-wise they always come second to the plethora of instruments that they are pitched against.

Yet this muted, quiet quality never detracts from what lyrical and vocal content is displayed, rather it makes you work harder to catch them, and the rewards are immense. Third track ‘Wired’ is one of ‘Hearts’ songs where Lindén’s double-tracked vocals are more prominent, particularly when she repeatedly breathes, “I don’t want to die alone.” Her voice is off-kilter and dissonant, particularly towards the jarring ending of the song, where she does battle against a barrage of percussion crescendo and eerie synths, before stripping the song’s structure into a simple guitar line.

Elsewhere, ‘Pulse’ lies at the more melodic end of the scale where ‘Hearts’ is concerned, beginning with a conventional, pop-like vocal line before the more distant beats and distortion-drenched guitars return to the record. Yet amongst the album’s resounding melodic beauty is an ominous sentiment, demonstrated most obviously in tracks such as ‘I Kill You Love, Baby!’, with its lengthy low and rumbling introduction and in ‘Load Your Eyes’, where syncopated programmed drumming evokes slightly sinister undercurrents. It is actually songs such as the more menacingly-titled ‘Cancer’ that actually defy expectation and provide some of the album’s more overtly uplifting moments, complete with its choral, church-like chiming beginning and the simply-arranged synths that kick in half way through, adding a sense of uniformity amongst a majority of songs that are wonderfully awash in murky, dissonant qualities.

With the playful, yet self-explanatory ending title of ‘No Way Outro’, the album’s final track is the perfect way to finish ‘Hearts’. Beginning with hushed quietude, followed deftly by the increased build-up of rolling drums, soaring strings and a bass line that is rendered ominously uplifting in the background, the entire song fades into silence, but not before Lindén’s vocals have had further chance to be exposed and appreciated. Taken as the finale of the same album that began with a combined entity as joyful as ‘Winter Beats’ and ‘Hearts’, the distorted accumulations of ‘No Way Outro’ serve to prove just how varied and talented Linden and Balck really are.

Although ultimately I Break Horses’ musical message is nothing entirely new – indeed they are not the first, nor most topical of bands to tackle shoegaze’s recent renaissance – what the band has done is condensed everything that makes the roots of the genre so captivating and completely modernised it, rather than merely adding to an existing formula of tried-and-tested triumph. Instead what I Break Horses succeed in doing is capturing these electronic elements and setting a new benchmark: redefining the confines of the genre, and as a result creating one of the very best debut albums of the year.