It's strange when you come across a really great record by someone you didn't know previously way into the band concerned's career, as I have with Broken Rainbows, Columbia Ohio's tenth album just out. You feel you arrived in the chapter towards the end of a great novel and should really turn back and start reading the whole thing again. But then the chapter you're reading is quite engrossing enough on its own.
Enough of this painful and rather oddly fitting metaphor for the time being. Broken Rainbows is a record that commands your attention on its own merits. Five middle aged men talking about all kinds of life's strange, inexplicable wonders in a nuanced and involving way on a record they somehow managed to record either together or separately in the Oregonia Studio in erm Ohio, sometime between Summer and Winter 2021.
This record invents no new wheels but in music there is sometimes no need to do that, especially when the record is as good as this one is. Broken Rainbows might remind you first and foremost of Neil Young and his rich legacy, but also Wilco, Grandaddy, Reigning Sound, Green On Red, Miracle Legion and other travellers on the Great American Highway. Sometimes, oddly and pleasingly, David Berman too!
Another list. Hey I'm a bloke of a certain age who loves music most, so of course I'm going to make lists whenever I get the chance . Moviola are clearly one of the great if least lauded Ohio bands. Ohio has the most fascinating music legayt. Pere Ubu, Devo, Guided By Voices, The Breeders, The Afghan Whigs, Dead Boys, Nine Inch Nails. It all kind of makes me want to go to Ohio.
In the mean time I'll listen to Broken Rainbows and wonder what it's like there. Broken Rainbows kind of makes it sound like an interesting place. It's a bruised but consoling and rather lovely chapter. Now to find time to read the rest of Moviola's book.
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