Posted on: July 7, 2008 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Hailing from Birmingham, Alabama, The Broken Letters exist as the primary medium for the songwriting and vocal lyricism of David Hickox. With a crooked craft of melody and a penchant for dark and Biblical delivery, the Broken Letters create songs of love and death, birth and pain, of the moon and of a great fire. Their full-length LP, Sing the Burning Alphabet, is out this summer.

Burning Alphabet

Hickox is aided in his quest by drummer and mutli-instrumentalist Brad Davis. The two were both indoctrinated at an early age by a rural Southern Baptist church. They met at a piao recital in second grade and in their early teens bought some instruments to learn the craft of music together. By their twenties they were playing in various bands, touring the US and Europe crating music for all who would hear.

Though they outgrew its spell, it was through the church that a true sanctuary was found in music and song. The Broken Letters weave their tales of love and death, hope and passion through the rich southern landscape, through the eyes of an ever-dying city strangled by unholy prejudices and stained by blood.

On their latest record, Sing the Burning Alphabet, Hickox and company explore a more lose and direct feel, focusing the energy of the songs on the preternatural realm instead of wasting in the physical realm by focusing on prefection– the fool’s pursuit that renders modern music rather lifeless. Songs were captured as the were being created, caught on tape at their birth, and with the electriciity that can’t be reproduced at any other time.

On Burning Alphabet and on the road beyond, the Broken Letters are forging a new bond between history and mystery, past and present, the spiritual and the profane, guided by the stars and elemental forces within.

Previous praise for the Broken Letters:

If you’re looking for labels The Broken Letters may fall into alt country or even the fading New Weird America pot. But they won’t be the ones to tell you. These two are busy forging a new sound, expanding southern mythology and inventing ways to make rock music dark and hypnotic.
– Matthew Smith, Delusions of Adequacy

Sometimes it seems that the holiest music isn’t being made inside churches…bands like Broken Letters are making something altogether awful, beautiful, and sacred.
– Pacific Northwest Inlander

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