Broadcast Tender Buttons

Whittled down from the full-band ensemble of Haha Sound, only Broadcast’s core duo of Trish Keenan and James Cargill appear on Tender Buttons. Fittingly, the album takes its inspiration from Neu! and early Kraftwerk, two-person outfits that helped define the influential Krautrock sound. The motorik pulse of those seminal German groups is the recurring theme of Tender Buttons, especially on “Black Cat” and “Bit 35,” the last of which is a hypnotic recreation of early Kraftwerk. The buzzing synths that have always been Broadcast’s stock-in-trade are here more prickly and cold than ever before, yet the icy sheen obscures some of the band’s most gentle moments to date. “Tears In the Typing Pool” eschews the band’s usual sonic tapestry for a simple duet between Keenan and an acoustic guitar, while the album winds down with “You and Me In Time,” a music-box lullaby that nonetheless refuses to completely abandon Broadcast’s taste for unsettling tone clusters.