In “Coffee Shops/Broken Legs,” Tel Aviv-based art-rock provocateur Alexander Boe offers an 8-minute uprising. The song is from his album of the same name, a slow-burning, experimental epic that dares listeners to sit still, pay attention, and face the noise of the mind and society head-on.
Written during an intense political tumult in Israel, Boe’s play reads like a mirror in which we see a generation's chaos, contradictions, and polite despair reflected back at us. “Coffee Shops/Broken Legs” spreads across three slices, scraping us through passages of facetious, off-kilter grooves, ghostly ambient haze, and a final, gut-punch shoegaze climax that’s more release than resolution.
It can be raw in places, and that is by design. The point is texture and emotion, not perfection. Glitchy guitars and atmospheric swells form the dim backdrop for Boe’s lyrical grit. His voice, frequently buried under distortion and delay, is struggling to survive. And it is in that endurance that the message resides. This is a statement piece. Veiled in poetic ambiguity, Boe’s lyrics take on the soul-sucking side of the music industry and the personal toll of staying true to one’s art. There’s a feeling of contained chaos, of someone holding it together just long enough to get through the verse, scream into the void, make a mark, and then leave.
If you’re searching for a standard touch of the hooks or a sugared-up chorus, try somewhere else. If you can’t get down with music that wants something of you, music that agitates, excites, and sticks, then “Coffee Shops/Broken Legs” will leave a quick, bruising impression.
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