Bittersweet melancholia from an introspective feedback-drenched London-based duo whose muse is as redolent of earthy breathlessness as their pastoral contemporaries the Stormclouds; similar vocal delivery too, handed down reverentially to Martine from an early Saint Kendra, parsed with the stillness of time and infused with the languidly eerie guitar fills of the Valentino of pop, a man named simply Clive. It always strikes me as silly to suggest you look no further than the final track, but on this occasion 'Please Decide Quickly' really has it all: mysteriously echoed, supremely languorous vocals which come swathed in white lace and patchouli, torn apart by a searing guitar line which is pure first generation Precoda. Elsewhere, the dyspeptic duo strum up a maelstrom of shimmering Grimble Grumblesque feedback on 'Season Of Blame', run through an inspired cover of the 1968 Left Banke single 'Dark Is The Bark' (one can’t help wondering if it were chosen because of the canine reference in the title; next time perhaps a Bubble Puppy song, it can be no mere coincidence that the Puppy chose their name from Aldous Huxley’s 'Brave New World' whilst Broken Dog took theirs from a libretto by Verlaine) - and curl up into a tiny, sleepy ball to whisper the achingly lo-fi 'Where Will You Go When There’s Nowhere Left To Go?' wherein the ghost of Nick Drake collides with the acid-folk of Stone Breath. There’s much more to this album than meets the ear, and indeed to Broken Dog themselves - no less than three other CD-Eps, one each from 1996,7 and 8, all released by Big Cat, all fiercely individualistic and all plangently beautiful.

British boy-girl duo Broken Dog emerge from the shadows of their spiritual forebears-American acts such as Mazzy Star, Absolute Grey or Moon Seven Times-with their own compelling take on atmospheric, semi-acoustic, psychedelic folk music, not equaled on these shores since the late great Faith Over Reason. The keyboards on 'Hide Away' have a peculiarly English, early 1970s vibe, but, otherwise, here are all the genre hallmarks faultlessly reproduced-vibrating, resonant guitar, gentle ripples of percussion, haunting suspended listless female vocals and the occasional lurch into effects-pedal overdrive adding light and shade. While Mazzy Star sometimes stretch simple melodies into expansive cosmic jams, Broken Dog throw away in three minutes ideas that would sustain their peers for whole albums. Maybe 14 songs in 40 minutes is half a dozen too many for the average lonely late-night listening classic, but, at worst, this is an embarrassment of riches.

If you plan to become deranged, then this is the way to do it. Deliciously pleasant and full of anguished fun, Broken Dog have unleashed (geddit?) a monster. It’s hard to believe they are a duo. How can only two people create so much enjoyment? Especially when one of them is called Clive! A bit like the Cocteau Twins in places their songs are often musically minimalist, yet contained within the loosely structured confines there remains a rather attractive atmosphere. Haunting almost. There are some good tunes here too. It’s one of those albums you can listen to several times and find something new on each occasion. A very successful, very enjoyable debut, I reckon.

Signings to London indie Big Cat tend to be American, and Broken Dog certainly sound in cahoots with the lo-fi brigade across the Atlantic. But the duo of Martine and Clive are definitely British, though they hold a Yankophile candle primarily for the desolate attic seclusion of LA’s Mazzy Star-not only for their boy-girl duo set-up and song-titular similarities ('Where Will You Go When There’s Nowhere Left To Go?', 'Baby I’m Lost Without You', 'Lullaby', et al) but the stripped-back, druggy dynamic, Broken Dog are, nevertheless, a warped, experimental version of Mazzy Star, interrupting the latter’s seamless dreaminess with haphazard guitar fuzz, awkward rhythms and an air of increasing dislocation.

Broken Dog aren’t going anywhere, by the sound of it. Not on foot. Nowhere you could find on an AA road map. Just everywhere you can yearn for, half seen, out of your bedroom window. Which is why, if this secret and bittersweet debut album from the mysterious London duo of Martine and Clive had a smell, it’d be as fragrant as night-scented stock; addictive as wet leaves and moss; sweet as a lungful of cold air.
It’s stealthy, careless, as exhaustedly bitter as it is consolatory; a rippling haze of clandestine guitars and nameless instruments splintering into the star patterns woven on broken glass, as the whole of it hovers up into the trees. Martine’s deadpan vocals sound like MBV’s Belinda-half-breathed, half-sung-or sometimes are calmly pitying like Telstar Ponies’ resident angel. The weary, uneasy twangs rippling over the surface of 'I Existed' sound like country music from a planet with five times our gravity and an iron deficiency severe enough to provoke visions of rapture.
It’s lo-fi, of course-which makes me wonder whether the Fostex R8 hasn’t done more for music of late than 40 years of Les Pauls-and it’s blessed (as on 'Season Of Blame') with the most languorous of Labradford-isms. With blues learnt by heart and forgotten; with the frizzle of feedback hovering between the here and the thereafter. With a delicate 'Stay On My Side', whose heartless edge and skittering strings sting like insects; with the drone of 'Lullaby' swollen with disquiet; with a cover of the Left Banke’s 'Dark Is The Bark' that sounds like The Beach Boys melting, drowning.
If there’s any clamour here, it’s in the way each song demands praise all its own, from the spiteful cymbals and single chords of 'Baby I’m Lost Without You' to the frail, parchment-like vocals of 'Please Decide Quickly' in which Martine sounds like she’s already a million miles away. 'Where Will You Go When There’s Nowhere Left To Go?' ask Broken Dog. Out the window. Into the trees. Toward the stars.

LO-FIDELITY experimentation is a trial at the best of times. Although intended to define groups as outsiders in the commercial drowning pool of the music business, what it usually amounts to, with a few exceptions, is a load of bull’s gonads. But when your as sussed and downright perverse as London’s Broken Dog, scaling down your songs and recording them as if through a thick layer of gauze can be a liberating experience.
Martine and Clive are a duo who seem to mimic the effects of a drunken stupor with a slow music that crawls, lurches and seems to be missing a center of gravity. If Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks soundtrack was made with a non-existent budget and shredded in the process, then stuck back together, maybe it would approach the askew moods here. Strictly speaking, Martine is not a singer, but her semi-spoken half-whispers perfectly compliment the sometimes liquid, sometimes distorted, always well-scored backings.
The main sense here is one of unease, like a disintegrating relationship or something lurking in the darkness just out of reach. Romantic ditties like the fraught 'Lullaby' are perfectly balanced with quasi-feminist tracks like the declamatory 'I Existed', but there are always hints that something’s not quite right.
The intimate settings of the terror-struck 'Hide Away' and the pressure involved in 'Where Will You Go When There’s Nowhere Left To Go?' all point to withdrawn, almost agoraphobic types who have retreated to their bedrooms and locked out the world. But then comes the sucker punch as the sweetly melodic music suggests they in fact want the world to come to them, albeit on their own difficult terms.