"Broken Flowers" is often cited as the most fully-realized PC Music single, a polished gem of a track released on a famously ephemeral label. Its author, Danny L Harle, is a shadowy figure, even by PC Music standards. We do know that he's a childhood friend of label head A.G. Cook (with whom he performs in Dux Content), a classically trained composer and seems to have played a foundational role in defining the PC Music aesthetic. And yet, he's only released a few solo tracks since the label's emergence—he might be the least prolific Soundcloud phenom this side of Jai Paul.
Anticipation for new music from Harle is understandably high, a fact that clearly hasn't been lost on PC Music. The Broken Flowers EP marks PC Music's inaugural joint release with Columbia Records, the first shot fired in what the label has described as, "[a] multi-tier attack exposing the radical DNA of chart music, and the heart and soul behind every lab creation." Clocking in at 4 songs and just under 15 minutes, the Broken Flowers EP is a focused, purposeful release, clearly meant to introduce the PC Music sound to new listeners and commercial heights.
The EP is bookended by the titular single—closing track "Awake For Hours" is really just a remix of "Broken Flowers" that speeds up the original to a breakneck pace. Luckily, "Broken Flowers" is still a thrilling listen two years on. This is the closest thing the label has to a deep-house cut, a song that would feel at home on almost any dancefloor despite its winkingly maudlin lyrics. The track builds with impressive precision, with sinuous arpeggios, marimba notes and reverberating vocal samples clicking into place atop a driving 4/4 beat. What's more, it sounds as if Harle has rebuilt the song from scratch for this release; where the original reveled in cliché house sounds, every element in this mix, including the vocals, feels cleaned up and refined.
The two new songs, "Forever" and "Without You", don't disappoint, even as they diverge from the template Harle sketched out on "Broken Flowers". Both tracks hew much closer to the PC Music playbook, with chirpy, pitched up vocals sitting atop glistening, Technicolor synths. "Without You" is a clear standout, surfacing the melancholic undercurrent that gave "Broken Flowers" its depth. Vocalist Emily Verlander pines for a lover over an airy track that heaves and sighs, exploring the tension between helium-inhaling vocals and confessional lyrics. The implication here is unclear--we're either being invited to dismiss the heartbroken pop song as naive or confront the infantilization of female narrators in pop. Harle's role as the male auteur behind the curtain further complicates our understanding, lending the song the sort of discomfiting air that's become a PC Music trademark.
As compelling as the music on the Broken Flowers EP is, calling it an EP feels like a bit of stretch—it's really just a single, one that's anchored by a remake of a track that's been out for two years. Then again, it's hard to blame Harle and PC Music for playing it safe given the stakes here. At the core of PC Music's agenda lies a desire to simultaneously critique and embrace chart pop by mimicking its form; what better way to signal the fulfillment of the label's ambitions than with an actual charting pop single? "Sometimes I feel, maybe/This could be real," Verlander admits on "Without You". She adds, ironically, "Trust me."
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