The Broken River Prophet: Press

Get ready for a loosely styled, vaguely psychedelic tangle of chaos that never appears the same way twice...Allston's most freewheelin' purveyors of overmedicated Americana.

"the disc is titled "With Infinite Arms To Cradle The Flames", I've been spending a lot of time with my
preview copy, and it's one of the best albums to come out of this town in
a long while." -Bradley's Almanac

What does it say about a city that its most interesting bands are the ones who are winging it? Well, one interpretation might be that there are just way too many bands playing remarkably similar, heavily structured brands of pop rock, leaving improvisation as the only recourse for the artistically nimble and inherently rebellious. That's a little too stony, though. The reality is that people just miss each other.
"Really, Broken River was a way to hang out, play and collaborate with all of the talented people I know," says Adam Brilla, whom you may have already spotted in the grufftastic Tiny Amps and/or the drone-(s)laying Lockgroove. "There's always a song that we keep at the center of things; but it's a really great feeling to hear what it ends up turning into when different people are involved." And there are plenty of those...The dozens of incarnations that Broken River Prophet has taken ...are a tangle of local indie genealogies: There are strains of spunky thoroughbred Boston post-pop like the Vinyl Skyway, Charlene and Syrup USA; traces of bombastic experimentalism from the likes of the Common Cold, Compass and Lockgroove; and hues of the swoon-inducing heartscraping tendencies of Victory at Sea, Mistle Thrush and the Shenzou 5. It's a long list of people who know how to write songs;which means they know how to unwrite them, too. Since the unpredictability quotient is high at any given BRP show, what the band is getting into bears striking resemblance to what the audience is getting into... Individual figures echo and vary from one instrument to the next, colors deepen, songs take off and what could end up being a gnarly brouhaha reliably turns into a soothing, swelling din of hunch, chance, distortion and yes, genuine rock power...As for what they'll do, your guess is as good as theirs. Which is good."

[Taro Hatanaka] made his last local appearance for the foreseeable future, guesting with the Lockgroove/Mistle Thrush spinoff Broken River Prophet at T.T. the Bear’s Place. "He’s going away for a while," said head Prophet Adam Brilla, "so enjoy his playing while you can." Hatanaka, a native of Japan...was sitting in with BRP to provide plaintive violin for the group’s more melancholy, subdued songs. But on the set’s finale, the group built an epic from the ground up, starting with nothing but some theremin noise and ending in full-on freak-out mode, with Lockgroove’s Martin Rex joining in on a second drum kit, the theremin spastically squealing and Brilla and Hatanaka furiously strumming and bowing. It was a fitting farewell. 3/17/05

Broken River Prophet is apparently Adam, the vocalist and lead guitarist, and whoever else is playing with him... The songs are all kind of down-tempo, and this leaves time for a lot of interesting stuff. Sept.2003