Today’s band came to me via a myspace friend request, and they totally changed my mood that day, - in a positive way. The band is called The Brokenmusicbox, and they play a warm and wonderful kind of folk-flavoured indiepop with beautiful female vocals in front.

The Brokenmusicbox is a project from San Francisco, with Kimberly Contreras and Tony Wentzel as the core members. I’m not sure what I can compare their sound with, but the dreamy vocals often give me flashbacks to brilliant artists like Harriet Wheeler of The Sundays, Hope Sandoval of Mazzy Star or Karen Peris of The Innocence Mission.
They manage to create a wonderful atmosphere with their music, and listening to their songs definitely does ’something’ to me.  Their myspace page is not what I would call ‘informative’, so I sent over some questions to the band to get the info I needed. They were kind enough to allow us to use one of their songs here. On this one,  you can hear vocals from both Tony Wentzel and Kimberly Contreras.  Head over to the bands myspace  for more music.

The Brokenmusicbox - Rhyme nor Reason

So, here are my questions to the band, and their answers:

* I like the name! What is the story?

my first guitar had a bolt protruding through the neck. when i acquired my first used four track it had all these little problems. I used to have to put a shoe behind the power button and it lean it all against the wall so it would stay on when i was recording. i felt cursed, but i continued on anyway writing and recording these brokensongs. that broken four track is the original inspiration behind the name but broken things was a reoccuring theme in the music making journey.. broken things, broken people,

* The history of the band… how and when did it all start, and how has it developed?

it was me and the four track for a while…mostly a recording project. i played a couple shows in 2001 under the name but after that it was really just an expanding collection of shoesboxes full of cassettes. we met in 03 and began sporadically playing and recording together. we both had other projects/ bands until around the beginning of 06 when we recruited a keyboardist and unbeknowns to us began to write and record the demos for "waking the sound". we tried building a live band. auditioning all these people. it was impossible. we gave up and decided that we would make a record anyway. i think we knew what we didn’t want to sound like. we began tracking in early 07 and finished in november.

* On your myspace, you say that there will be an album out in February 2008. Could you tell me more about this one?

sure thing! the record is called "Waking the sound" and will be out at the end of the month. It features the following friends & musicians: drums - Jay pellicci (31 knots), rhodes/ organ- Jason Ruck (filmschool), bass- Kevin hite (Idaho Falls), piano- Jeff Hashfield (pleasure kills, HI-Nobles), lead guitar (Jim Wentzel)

* Plans and hopes for 2008?

we definitely plan on getting some people together and playing some shows later this year. there could also be a a followup EP in the works, or a perhaps a video.

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The Brokenmusicbox is definitely a band I will keep my ears open for in 2008! I Hope you all enjoyed this as much as I did.