The Broken Islands – ‘Desolation’
The Broken Islands are the gift that keeps on giving. Back in the early days, I described their work as sweeping, grand, criminally ignored. They were a band who sounded like thirty people without an ounce of fat, filling a void in music that was hard to name but glaring when absent, blending genres with ease. They could close an episode of Twin Peaks without breaking a sweat, creating richly layered songs that built drama without tipping into indulgence.
This is a record of waves and weight; of strangling yet invigorating turbulence; of fingers gripping the masthead out of instinct even as some deeper part of you knows the sea is the more honest place to be. The band have often referred to themselves as ‘post‑shoegaze’, and maybe this time, it actually fits. Not because they’re doing the genre’s usual shimmer‑and‑sigh routine, but because they sound like what happens after shoegaze – after the flood, after the structures have softened, after the guitars have swollen with salt. Time to leave the shoegaze references on the doormat.
The gloam is the key here. Not darkness, not melancholy, but that eternal twilight where everything is half‑lit and half‑lost. The vocals feel like signals from a sinking vessel, carried on wind that’s forgotten its direction. The guitars churn like distant surf, with the rhythm section moving with the slow inevitability of tides that don’t care whether you’re ready. It’s music that doesn’t rise so much as settle. ‘Cadavre Exquis’, the second track on the album, scratches an unbearable itch with smashed bottles and yet you still come back for more. If their earlier albums were widescreen, ‘Desolation’ is a long tracking shot through a gigantic half‑submerged corpse.
What’s striking is how natural this feels. The eclecticism of ‘Wars’, the grand scale of ‘Masquerade’ – all of it has dissolved into something more elemental. Less drama, more inevitability. Less horizon, more undertow.
And yet, for all its heaviness, ‘Desolation’ is not a bleak album. It’s strangely comforting. There’s a pleasure in letting it close over your head, the sense that fighting the current is pointless, and perhaps even dishonest. Why scramble back to shore when the foam is warmer, more forgiving, more honest?
‘Desolation’ is not an album to be dissected track by track; it behaves like a weather system, like seasons collapsing into one another. A slow drowning in a warm bath, a celebration of the wrinkled fingers and toes and less emphasis on the exploding lungs. It’s the sound of a band that has stopped trying to rise and instead learned how to embrace the grace of sinking. Why dismiss the shipwreck so quickly when some wrecks feel more like home.
Daz Lawrence
In Conversation with Stephen Cameron
Who’s in the band nowadays?
Things have changed for sure. The Broken Islands were formed back in 2016, and Rachelle and I are the only remaining original members. We were the primary songwriters for ‘Desolation’. Much of this album was written during the pandemic and shortly after in relative isolation, so both Rachelle and I came into the studio with a handful of songs, and we then fleshed them out with our new members Tristan Helgason, Jessica Benini and Liam Bryant during the pre-production process. Because the songs were written individually, a first for us as a band, many of the different parts were cobbled together in our home studios and then improved upon when we all got together in the studio.
How does “post‑shoegaze” sit with you these days – is it still a useful label or just a convenient shorthand? [For what it’s worth, I always hated shoegaze as a term; it just felt like a license for bands to be lazy]
I really don’t know what to call us, and “post-rock-shoegaze” is the only thing we landed on out of convenience. Genre labels are so abstract anyways. Interestingly, when we played the Portals festival in London back in 2023, we felt like we had finally found our musical home, and I think they refer to it as experimental rock, but I’m hoping you can tell us!
What’s the background of recording Desolation – where it happened, how it felt, what shaped the sessions
As I mentioned above, this one was a different animal for us. The previous two albums were much more collaborative, with songs coming out of jams or partial ideas and then fine-tuning them during demoing. Those records were recorded and mixed in a two-week window, whereas this album spans a couple of years, in different locations and a different writing process. We mostly worked apart and had songs ready to record when we finally were able to get together. Recording took a long time in bits and pieces. We recorded drums for some songs here in Vancouver, a few more while on tour in Cornwall, England, and many of the guitars, synths, bass and vocals were done at my home studio and a recording studio in Halfmoon Bay, BC. It felt a bit fragmented working this way, and it also felt like it took an incredibly long time to get it done. We ended up with only 7 songs out of 10 we recorded making it to the final album.
The Vancouver sessions were at Hipposonic in Vancouver in the fall of 2022, a legendary rock studio in the 80’s and 90’s (previously called Little Mountain Sound), and we were able to get drums recorded for a half dozen songs, as well as track some vocals and guitars for Tempest and Dahlia. Our long-time co-producer Dave Ogilvy worked with us on all those sessions.
While we were on tour in the UK in May 2023, we had a 9-day break between playing The Great Escape and Portals, so we opted for finding a residential studio to call home and work on the album. We were booked into a studio in Fowey, Cornwall, but at the last minute, they essentially ghosted us, so we had to scramble at the last minute, and we found a fantastic place called Propagation House, also in Cornwall. We were able to get the rest of the drums tracked as well as some vocals and scratch tracks for guitars, bass etc.
Returning to British Columbia, we recorded the guitars, synths and bass at my home studio over the course of a few months and essentially had all the components complete, apart from a few vocal tracks still needing to be captured. Working with Dave “Rave” Ogilvy again for this record, he invited us up to a studio in Halfmoon Bay, BC, to finish and mix the record. The owner of that studio, Anthony “Fu” Valcic, is a long-time collaborator with Dave and a guy who owns an impressive collection of analogue synthesisers! Heaven! Luckily, he had a couple of the exact same synths (Moog Sub Phatty, Korg MS-20 and a Juno 106) we used to track some of the scratch tracks in Cornwall, so that all fit together remarkably well. Over the course of 6 months (you can see a trend here…), Rachelle and I travelled by ferry to Halfmoon Bay a few times and finished all the vocals, and then Fu and Rave mixed the record.
What did you learn from the first two albums that fed into the making of this one?
I think one of the biggest lessons from the ‘Wars’ and ‘Masquerade’ sessions is to take the time to let things sit with you before moving on. I think we need to revisit things after a bit to listen with fresh ears. Condensing the recording and mixing into a short timeline results in having to make compromises, but that said, hopefully, the next record does not take as long as ‘Desolation’ was to finish!
The new album feels heavier, more tidal, more eroded in the best possible way – was that a conscious direction or something that emerged naturally?
Somewhat intentional, and a result of where we were at during that time. Whenever we talked about writing the record or sharing ideas with each other, both Rachelle and I wanted and ended up with darker, moodier songs influenced by our personal lives and all the events occurring around us. The past few years have been a struggle for many, and we were also affected by that.
Who did you work with on production and mixing this time, and what did they bring to the sound?
As with ‘Wars’ and ‘Masquerade’, our long-term partner in crime is Dave “Rave” Ogilvy. He helped us fine-tune songs, record and mix in Vancouver and Halfmoon Bay. Much of the heavy lifting for ‘Desolation’ was also done by Anthony “Fu” Valcic, who graciously let Rachelle and me live at his house, stay up late listening to music and did an amazing job mixing and helping us get the right synth sounds that we didn’t know we even wanted. Both Rave and Fu have buckets of experience and finely tuned ears that made this record possible, and we are eternally grateful for that.
Have your musical tastes changed over the years?
That’s a tough question, because I think it’s like a boiled frog. You don’t know if they’ve changed at all until you look back at some of the music you’ve created and see different influences. Boldly speaking on behalf of Rachelle as well, I think we both have roots in heavy music but also love anything that does something different. Speaking for myself, I love finding new music that challenges conventions or genres and does something unpredictable. I’m also a sucker for complex rhythms and odd times.
If you were on a compilation, who would you like to see as other artists alongside you?
Oh boy. Never would I think we could even be mentioned in the same breath as these artists, but here goes:
Nine Inch Nails
Russian Circles
Mogwai
Deftones
Björk
Caribou
Mazzy Star