Review Summary: Clever pop punk aimed at the comic book generation.
While most - if not all - genres of music seem able to divide opinion, pop punk seems to be the premium contender in its ability to create binary oppositions rather than simple disagreement. It's not suprising: in one corner stands the behemoth of commercially successful pop punk, which began with a record named after liquid excrement and now finds its champions in such bands as diverse in content and quality as blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, New Found Glory and, still, Green Day. In the other corner stand the underdogs, at least in terms of digits on pay checks; in this corner there are artists who feel the need to rather commendably defend the genre, to release albums themed around their post-coolness and, in many instances, to genuinely mix the breeziness and sweet melodic quality of pop with the energy and freedom of punk. While these bands might not count their fans by the million, they often create loyal followings, achieving that dreaded thing: cult status. Unfortunately, there will always be those that aim for either corner and eventually miss both, and Ludo seem to be one of these minor tragedies. This may be due to a lack of cohesion in their two full length records, where songs seem clumped together and individual moments of brilliance are lost amongst ill-considered, half-realised ideas. On
Broken Bride, though, they struck gold. Flawed gold, perhaps; but gold nevertheless.
It shouldn’t work. In fact, it should fail horribly; but it doesn’t. You see, while Ludo are a pop punk band through to their very core,
Broken Bride, in all its EP-ness, is a rock opera, and a remarkably successful one to boot. To describe why the record does in fact work so brilliantly is impossible without giving away a little of the story, so here goes: a young man laments over the death of his wife and decides to travel through time to save her; his travels take him to prehistory where dinosaurs roam and swarm, then to the end of time, or at least the end of Earth, where humanity is fighting a final war in which the protagonist becomes involved; eventually he makes it back to the morning of his wife’s death and meets her again... To give away the ending would ruin a wonderful and ultimately touching moment of realisation, and so this review will avoid any further plot details.
Now, while this story might not seem like the most original idea ever conceived, what it succeeds in doing is making the whole thing believable. The whole record is built around a very strong sense of melody and clever (in a graphic novel kind of way) lyrics. There are vocal hooks of varying complexity ladled all over this record, but this never leads to a sense of fragmentation, except where the band intend there to be one due to the episodic nature of the story. And amidst the recurring theme of lost love and grief there is an incredibly rich seam of imagery, so brilliantly evocative that at times it seems impossible not to imagine the scene, whether they be incredible fantasies such as eyeless commanders of armies; bloody seas with corpses of whales on their scabbed surfaces, or something as mundane as a loved one’s socks on a wood floor. The vocalist attacks each song with complete conviction and seems to respect the subject matter, which gives the whole thing its believability and even a celebratory quality. This is, by the very end of the last song, what makes the record so touching. While it might be more rock-cartoon than opera, these are identifiable characters designed to touch a nerve in the most jaded pop culture veteran.
There are flaws, though: at times the music slips from solid and creative pop punk into rather generic, lifeless ruts; occasionally there are dalliances with metal, the odd riff here and there sounding a little out of place, even when they match the current state of the plot. And even though Ludo add their own twist to it, the plot is an obvious rehash of a well trodden idea, albeit one that has never before made the complete transition from book or film to stereo. These flaws, however, do not come close to ridding
Broken Bride of its overall beauty, and for any fan of frivolous, passionate, incisive and resoundingly melodic music this record might just offer one of the more enjoyable half-hours you’ve had in a long while.
