Broken Record – T-60

Power Goth Recordings

I don’t really like Denver. When I look back at the time I spent living there, it’s easy to see that the city never even had a chance. I moved to Colorado mere months before COVID hit, which meant that I spent most of my three years there working from a tiny studio apartment, grappling with raging, undiagnosed OCD, and in a relationship that I was not equipped for. It was a hard time, and I wish I could have done it differently, but sometimes ya gotta deal with the cards you’re dealt. 

So sure, I may not have the best memories of the Mile High City, but even still, there are a few things I hold onto as exemplary pillars of Denver Excellence: Mutiny Info Cafe, Colorado Cherry Company, and Stadium Emo band Broken Record.

I first hopped on the Broken Record train in earnest in 2022 after I saw the group open for Carpool and Kali Masi at the venerated Denver DIY space Seventh Circle Music Collective. A couple of months later, the two-track Weightless felt like an incredible articulation of the band I had just seen on stage. One year after that in 2023, the group’s sophomore album, Nothing Moves Me, tightened the screws and ratcheted things up further, offering an even louder, dreamier, and heavier-hitting version of the band’s sound. Songs like the title track and “See It Through” hit like a damn truck, narrated by Lauren Beecher’s disaffected singing and propelled forward by the combo of Corey Fruin’s rattling bass and Nick Danes’ hard-as-shit drumming. 

Last year, a split between Broken Record and fellow Denver noise rockers Flesh Tape nudged the two bands closer together, swapping members and blurring the lines between the projects. Flesh Tape mastermind Larson Ross joined Broken Record on second guitar, amping up the band’s sound even further for “Ringer,” meanwhile, Lauren jumped on bass and drums for Flesh Tape’s contribution “Joe Hill’s Last Will.” 

In what appears to be a continuing escalation of their sound, this past week, Broken Record unleashed “T-60,” a three-minute rager that brings everything I love about this band to the forefront. While prior Broken Record tracks hovered around this fuzzed-out emo sound that felt somewhere between Sunny Day Real Estate and The Cure (with some Jimmy Eat World thrown in for good measure), “T-60” is faster and meaner, hitting more like something from Title Fight or Joyce Manor. This is an added bite that serves the band well, resulting in their most exciting and accessible song so far. 

“T-60” is just the first taste of Routine, Broken Record’s third album, which is set to be released this October and seems poised to be an ass-beater. For their new LP, the band tapped Justin Pizzoferrato (Dinosaur Jr., Wild Pink, Dazy) to produce and engineer, and if this single is any indication, we’re in for a treat when the full record hits this fall. Watching Broken Record evolve so much over the past few years has been thrilling, each song bringing them closer and closer to capturing the explosive indie rock sound that’s always been in their DNA. I may not like Denver, but I love Broken Record.