Broken Bells, Broken Bells

James Mercer and Danger Mouse come from different worlds. Mercer makes tender folk-pop in the Shins, while Danger Mouse is the avant-hip-hop pastiche genius behind projects like Gnarls Barkley and the Beatles-Jay-Z mash-up The Grey Album. But they both go in for a kind of haunted interiority, a vibe they nail on this unlikely but excellent collaboration. Throughout Broken Bells, DM's brittle, loopy beats and Mercer's mumble-core croon gel into songs that pull you in even as they fray at their dark edges. "The High Road" gets things going with video game burble, a slow strum-hop beat and Mercer's warm evocation of various states of spiritual flux. "Vaporize" begins with Mercer meekly testifying over a folk strum, then turns into an errant snare shuffle, complete with hymn-like backing vocals and synths-as-horns. On "The Ghost Inside" Mercer plays cardigan-sweater soulman over a beat that recalls Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy." On "Mongrel Heart" a sheer, perky groove and one-finger Farfisa tune leads us into a festively ghoulish South of the Border funeral march. The cagiest song here might be "The Mall & Misery" which, true to its title, takes some Gang of Four guitar scraping for a ride into woozy new wave purgatory; it's the feeling of being lost in the mall parking lot and trying to find your car — for the rest of eternity. That sense of displacement is a DM hallmark and Mercer is perfect at playing the friendly ghost in his funk machine.