Broods Take Euphoric Electropop to Dizzying Heights With ‘Conscious’

Matt Matasci

Hailing from New Zealand, the brother-sister duo of the Nott siblings has only been actively releasing music as Broods for a few years but in that time they produced a pair of excellent albums. The release of their sophomore album “Conscious” finds vocalist Georgia and multi-instrumentalist Caleb expanding the crystalline sound they explored on their synth-pop debut “Evergreen.” The results are a moodier and more mature effort, showcasing their penchant for penetrating pop hooks and moody instrumental atmospheres. With a second straight number one appearance on the New Zealand music charts and back-to-back impressive performances in the United States, it appears that the arrow for Broods is only pointing up.

Georgia wastes no time establishing her presence on “Conscious” with her voice taking on a soulful effect as she belts out the opening line of “Free” with “I’d lose everything so I can sing/Hallelujah, I’m free/I’m free, I’m free/I’m free, I’m free.” With her powerful voice taking the attention off of the instrumentation, a sinister-sounding synth line quietly builds low in the mix along with a click-clacking, hand-clapping beat that pushes the song toward its radio-ready chorus. Unsurprisingly, “Free” serves as the lead-off single for the album.

The next song on “Conscious” is equally radio-friendly, although it achieves this accessibility in a very different manner than the moody and dramatic “Free” does. Instead, “We Had Everything” adopts a carefree cadence, replete with cheerfully bouncing keyboard tones and a finger-snapping percussion that is fitting for the song’s joyful reminiscing on the innocence and euphoria of young love. A few songs down the line is “Heartlines,” a track with co-writer and fellow New Zealander Lorde’s fingerprints all over it. This one tones back some of the music from Caleb, allowing Georgia’s voice to fill the song in the same manner in which Lorde did on her big hits “Team” and “Royals.”

Midway through the album, Swedish electro-pop singer Tove Lo brings her dark influences onto the piano-driven ballad “Freaks of Nature.” The song takes a minimalist approach, utilizing a distant, stomping rhythm track to build toward its anthem-like crescendo. Tove Lo’s breathy vocals are a welcome complement to Georgia’s more straightforward singing approach, adding a change of pace to the album, which does tend to run together a bit over its 13-song length.

The second half of the album gets off to an upbeat beginning with the hyper-danceable one-two punch of “Recovery” and bipolar “Couldn’t Believe.” The latter song begins in a subdued manner before exploding into the ecstatic chorus: “And I couldn’t believe my eyes/I couldn’t believe my ears/I couldn’t believe my luck/I can’t believe you’re here/And I couldn’t believe my eyes/I couldn’t believe my ears/But I’m looking at you now/And I can’t believe we’re here.”

Unlike most albums, the title track of “Conscious” is the concluding song; also curious is the suddenly dark mood this track adopts when much of the previous 12 songs had been overwhelmingly uplifting and positive – even euphoric. With a toy-piano effect on the instrumentation, the haunting intro to “Conscious” takes it into a stomping transition and one of the only instances where Georgia’s vocals are given a heavy amount of studio effects. The song represents a slightly bizarre conclusion for an overwhelmingly bouyant album, although perhaps a fitting bookend to a record that began with the drama of “Free.”

Broods’ “Conscious“ is available from Apple Music June 24.