Broadcast, “Come on Let’s Go” (from The Noise Made By People, 2000)
Trish Keenan, the voice behind one of my favorite albums of the 00’s, has passed away of pneumonia.
It’s so weird to think about pneumonia as a cause of death — seems like a downright accident — but this illness is still fairly predominant and deadly in much of the world. For every 1,000 people in the UK, 6 of them acquire pneumonia; 1-2 are expected to die. That seems like such a small number, but even one death can feel like an enormous loss. And when it’s an extremely talented person such as Trish Keenan, it feels even larger.
The first time I ever heard Broadcast was at Maura’s old place in Fairmount, and I’m positive this was the song I heard. I guess this is one of Broadcast’s most well-known songs (perhaps The Most?) and there’s nothing wrong with it being in that vaunted position. It’s kind of one of the perfect modern songs ever in the way it coolly merged historical references of 1960s psychedelia and experimental electronic music with fin de siècle technology and sentiments — as if Young Marble Giants plugged away on laptops instead of a groovebox. If the Y2K bug were to hit, wipe out everything in existence and all that, then I’d rather it sound like the sonic landscape of a Broadcast song.
“Stop looking for answers in everyone’s faces / Come on let’s go,” she would say to us at the height of our snot-soaked, teary hysteria as we poke through the rubble for scraps of our material possessions. Trish Keenan’s voice was so levelheaded and reasonable sounding, especially amid the luxurious instrumentation. What truly distinguished her from other singers dabbling in a more robotic approach to their vocals wasn’t the coolness itself but rather the thoughtfully studied and careful approach to singing about these topics in particular. It was always humane and human.
The black-and-white treatment of this video, combined with the abstracted transitions, use of negative images, and overexposure does little to alter that otherworldly and unreachable nature that defined the band. Watching it today is particularly hard, especially when Keenan sings, “What’s the point in wasting time on people that you’ll never know?” It almost feels like she is singing her own obituary to us, and once again the levelheadedness is prevailing while we’re all a blubbering mess. This time, it’s over her and not the end of the world.
(Source: natepatrin)
