The Broken West on eMusic (and the street).

From the Absolute Powerpop followup department: The Broken West's I Can't Go On I'll Go On is finally out today on Merge Records, which means it's also available on eMusic. It's the long-awaited full-length from the dudes formerly known as The Brokedown, and about whom I've mentioned on several previous occasions.

So how's the album itself? I've had a chance to listen to it over the last couple of weeks, and it's pretty good. Not quite the near-perfection of The Dutchman's Gold EP (with which it shares "Down In The Valley"), but pretty darn good. The move to Merge has them sounding a bit more "indie rock" than power pop ("Brass Ring" is a nice track, but it sounds like someone told them to write one that sounds like Spoon - ditto for "Big City"), but they never were a pure power pop band to begin with. Among the highlights, "So It Goes" is an excellent number, as is "Shiftee", which features their alt-country roots, and "You Can Build An Island" is Dutchman's Gold-worthy.

The Broken West (f/k/a The Brokedown) news.

Since I already revisited Joe Kennedy earlier today, why not check in another band I featured earlier in the year? So here's some news about a band many of you may know as The Brokedown, who were forced to change their name to The Broken West. In case you were wondering why, here's what the band had to say:

Perhaps you have noticed something a little bit different about our profile. We are no longer called the Brokedown. We are now The Broken West. This will take some getting used to. Here's the story, in an attempt to head off future explanations: The Brokedowns threatened to sue us if we didn't change our name. We're a real band, with a real record coming out, so we don't have a lot of time for frivolous lawsuits with wayward Nazi-youth punk bands. So we changed it. We hope you all can adjust, as we have (kind of).

Anyway, the big news with The Broken West is that they're about to put out a full-length disc through Merge Records, titled I Can't Go On, I'll Go On, which is due out January 23.

They have three tracks from the album on their myspace page, although one of them ("Down In The Valley") was on their great 2005 EP, The Dutchman's Gold. For more on that EP, and a couple of still-working mp3 links, head to my original post from March right here. In case you don't want to click through, here's what I had to say about them back then: "Although a lot of bands have both power pop and alt-country influences, they managed to create a fairly unique sound of their own that draws from the best of both. They cite Big Star, ELO, The Byrds, Rolling Stones, Wilco, Flying Burrito Bros. as influences, with good reason."