I Break Horses are upfront about their influences. They list My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Jesus and Mary Chain on their website and are signed to Cocteau Twins’ Robert Gutherie’s Bella Union label. Dream-pop, shoegaze, beautiful noise…whatever you want to call it. It’s a well established genre at this point, and I Break Horses don’t spend too much time trying to innovate. Instead they put all the best parts in a blender and use the pureed result to establish a very definite mood. This mood is the thing that makes Hearts, now reissued in a deluxe edition on I Kill Love and Bella Union, such a joy to listen to.
The project started in Maria Lindén’s bedroom, inhibited by the cold Swedish winters and her own love of solitude. She sought out drummer Fredrik Balck to fill in beats, and he happened to be a lyricist as well. And although the lyrics are largely too gauzy and whispery to be readily understood, Lindén douses them in emotion. Her vocals are largely the centerpiece of the album, even if they are mixed into the music rather than layered on top of it. Filling out the rest is combination of synthesizers, guitars, and various effects. It’s a syrupy mess of sweetness that is somehow both dense and ethereal.
The album begins strongly with “Winter Beats”, driven by an impossibly strong vocal melody from Lindén. The opener dissolves seamlessly into the title track, which closes with what is perhaps one of the best hooks on the record. The rest of the album might be a little overshadowed by the two openers at first listen, but repeated plays allow what are well crafted songs to fully sink into the unconsciousness. “Pulse” and “Cancer” in particular have an emotional resonance that helps make this more than just a collection of songs.
With such an ecstatic quality to the sound, there’s not a lot of overt darkness but it’s there. Some of the song titles (“Cancer,” “Empty Bottles”) suggest all is not pure happiness, and one of the album’s most beautiful tracks is ironically named “I Kill Your Love, Baby!” While the songs are often majestic, there’s a haunting, almost melancholic vibe throughout that’s hard to pinpoint. It gives Hearts more depth than it at first seems.
Hearts reportedly took three years to finish and Lindén says it won’t take as long next time. But hopefully there’s nothing lost in picking up speed. It’s probably no accident that a similar, several-years-in-the making record (My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless) turned out to be such a masterpiece (and big influence on I Break Horses). With the accelerated pace of music production these days, hearing something in which time was spent is extraordinary. If all goes well they’ll only expand on the results in their next outing.
