Danger Mouse rings in the new

The superstar producer/remixer of Blur, Beck, the Black Keys andmany more has teamed up with the frontman of The Shins. Andy Gillmeets the duo

This is the day of the expanding man," sang Steely Dan severaldecades ago, a prescient claim which, in terms of musicaldevelopment, has only begun to resonate strongly in the past five orten years, with the rise of eclecticists like Damon Albarn. Theartist who perhaps best bears out the notion of the expanding man isBrian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, whose diverse work includespartnership with Cee-Lo Green, as half of Gnarls Barkley; withrapper MF Doom as Dangerdoom; production of the second Gorillazalbum, Demon Days, and another Albarn project, The Good, The Bad AndThe Queen; and further production work for the likes of Beck,Sparklehorse, Martina Topley-Bird and The Black Keys. Burton's rangeand intentions were signalled with his first solo outing, 2004's TheGrey Album, a highly unofficial mash-up project which combinedtreated samples from The Beatles' "White Album" with vocal samplesfrom Jay-Z's The Black Album, which swiftly became an internet causecelbre following the inevitable cease-and-desist order from EMI.

The album's status as an art project, however, wasretrospectively strengthened a couple of years later when hecollaborated with graffiti artist Banksy on a project which involvedcovertly replacing 500 copies of Paris Hilton's album in Englishrecord stores with a version featuring altered artwork and a 40-minute song built from vocal soundclips of the hotel heiress. Lastyear, yet another of his art projects was stymied by EMI'sintervention, this time a three-way audio-visual collaborationbetween Danger Mouse, Sparklehorse and David Lynch, Dark Night OfThe Soul (Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous committed suicide last week).

Burton has likened his approach to that of a film director, thecreator of different kinds of musical worlds, within which hiscollaborators and production charges can perform. His latest musicalworld is as unexpected as any of his previous projects. Broken Bellsis the name of a new group formed with James Mercer, songwriter andfrontman with American indie band The Shins. The two first met in2004 at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, where Burton was DJ-ing."I had played the night before," he explains. "I had just gottentheir record Chutes Too Narrow, and wanted to see them play, so Istayed on to watch them the next day. Then we'd see each other ontours and at festivals here and there for years, and we kept up ouracquaintanceship."

It was during this period that Gnarls Barkley became hugelysuccessful with the single "Crazy" and album St Elsewhere, whilstThe Shins' brilliant third album Wincing The Night Away hoisted themto the upper reaches of the American charts, so neither of themcould spare much time for any outside musical enterprise - not thatthe subject ever came up. "We never even talked about it," saysMercer, "we just kinda hung out together."

"It just happened that in 2008 the timing was right, so westarted working on this," adds Burton. "I was finished touringGnarls, and wanted to do something different, and James was kind ofthe same way, he wanted to do something different, so we gottogether to see what would happen if we messed around. Producing wasalways a way for me to do other things, learn from other artists.But I wanted to be able to develop ideas and not have other peopleplace restrictions on what I do creatively. It's different whenyou're taking somebody else's idea for a song and trying to addyourself to it in some way, or make it more like something you wantto hear, rather than going in and trying to come up with your ownideas from scratch. So recently I've been playing more instruments,writing more songs, coming up with ideas and trying to do more stuffin that way. And when James and I got together that definitelysoftened the blow, because no matter what you do, James is stillvery unique and on top of how things are laid out musically."

Previously, Mercer had written all of The Shins' material,displaying a distinctive sense of melody and chord structures, andan equally unique lyrical slant, both of which are reprised to someextent in the Broken Bells songs. "That pleases me, that there'ssomething distinct about what I come up with melodically," he says,"I think that's my best suit, I have a talent for melodies. But it'sdifficult for me to understand exactly what that is, or how itworks. And certainly, on this record I didn't have the luxury ofsticking to my usual chord structures - Brian has a whole other sortof angle on things."

Perhaps the best way of describing Mercer's melodic gift, Isuggest, is to say that his melodies take the scenic route, ratherthan the most direct, which tends to make his songs less immediate,the kind of tunes which grow on the listener over four or fiveplays.

" I'm glad it's understood in that way," says Burton. "I figuredpeople would understand it more, I guess. Listening to James'svoice, the way he sings and everything, I wanted to hear what itwould sound like in different situations. Trying to make a beautifulrecord was really the only thing we had in mind. I don't know ifit's as polished, as much as it just feels right as a whole: it'salmost like a place you can go to when you listen to it."

The duo recorded the album at Burton's Los Angeles studio, Mercercommuting down from his Portland, Oregon base for a week or two atvarious times over the past year, until they had about 20 ideas, ofwhich they used the best ten. "I like that it's not too long," saysMercer. "There was actually another song that I thought should be onthe record, and Brian talked me into dropping it. It's so concise. Idon't understand the idea of 'bonus' tracks - I think people aresometimes a little too into what they're doing, too excited abouttheir own entertainment value or something. Labels love having thoseextra tracks, because it gives them rights to the master - they thenown that song, it's another song they'll get licensing money on. Iknow it's boring to talk about business, but in most contracts,after 11 songs, everything is free: they only pay you for the first11 songs, so if there's 17 songs on the album, you're giving themsix for free. Labels love that shit."

The resulting album is one of the year's best so far, up therewith the Midlake album (with which Burton and Mercer are deeplyenamoured) whose elusive, tangential manner it shares, from the wayit seems to sidle in nonchalantly on the back of a casual synthline, to the echoes of Brian Wilson, Ennio Morricone, Calexico andmore further-flung influences (such as the strange alliance ofWestern dobro guitar and Oriental string textures on the closingtrack "The Mall & Misery") scattered among the tracks.

"We weren't that deliberate about those things," says Burton,"it's just that we happened to have a lot of influences, and we kindof help each other, when we're recording, to keep to the parts whichsound most natural and best. We tried a lot of things, and maybe twoor three ideas would get turned into a single song, while some othersongs would be tried in three different ways till we found the waywhich worked best. We were just trying things out. And in the end, Ican't think of many influences we didn't put in there! When youspend that much time making an album, that's going to happen."

Though initially reluctant to discuss lyrics, Mercer does admitto a predilection for a certain type of thematic direction. "I hopeI keep finding new things to write about, but my favourite themes towrite about are broader things about the human condition," he says."Is that the right term to use? About situations when we know of ourown mortality, and how we face that? That seems to be the real bloodof art, for me. It's what makes for passion and stuff."

Several of the songs, I volunteer, seem to be about graspingopportunities and taking control over the direction of your life,realising the range of potential possibilities.

"That's conversations Brian and I have," says Mercer. "We'regetting to know each other all the time we've been making thisrecord, just hanging out after working in the studio, having a fewdrinks. And I think some of that ended up coming out in the songs."

"We're different in age, and our lifestyles are very different aswell," adds Burton, "but we're very similar as people, so it'sinteresting to see how things affect each of us. We both questionthings all the time. And towards the end, there was a little bit ofspace that came into it as well - by which I mean, outer space:realising our own insignificance, and things. Which can either bequite daunting, as in, 'I might as well off myself', or it can be sofantastic, so amazing how free you are, and how much of a drop inthe bucket this is.

"I don't want to get too literal about it," he continues."Everybody's going to take whatever they take from it, which isgood. It's much to better to have a song dealing with an idea,prompting thoughts in your head about different things. I alwaysremember how a song by a band I loved meant something special to mebecause it was playing when I heard of how a friend of mine hadpassed away; then later, I learned it was about a political personhaving an affair, and it ruined the song for me. I wish I had neverfound out!"

The album 'Broken Bells' is out now on Columbia