Ludo- Broken Bride

September 22, 2005, 12:18 AM

Artist: Ludo
Album: Broken Bride
Label: Redbird Records
Release Date: 09/27/2005
Written by AJ, VP of Altsounds.com

If you could take influences from every great film you’ve ever seen and every great song you’ve ever heard and put it on one album, what would it sound like?

It would undoubtedly be epic in sound, ranging from upbeat punk rock to a haunting piano ballad, maintaining an almost operatic singularity… and it would have to tell a story. A love story, packed with action and adventure and even a little sci-fi. It would be a suspenseful, scary and wicked ride telling the tale of the lengths someone would go to for true love. And to stay in keeping with what we historically know of great works, such an album would come from somewhere you least expect it.

Like, perhaps, a little band from St. Louis called Ludo. A pop/punk outfit best known for danceable hits about Girls on Trampolines and characters from The Wonder Years. Although Ludo are recognized as one of the few bands capable of telling a story from beginning to end in a 4 minute mini-musical, their latest effort Broken Bride is more than just a little surprising. “When our last record came out, those songs were already 5 years old for us, 7 years old now. We’ve continued writing this whole time, and the song Broken Bride became a fan favorite at live shows. It tells the story of a man’s wife dying, it destroying his life and leaving him feeling isolated, and him doing everything in his power to get her back,” says Tim Convy, keyboardist for Ludo. “We couldn’t just leave it there. I think we were all curious about what happens to this guy next, so we wanted to tell the rest of the story.”

For those familiar with Ludo, it is difficult to initially take the album seriously. Being used to funny and sarcastic pop rock that instantly brings a smile to your face, allowing yourself to feel the intensity of an apocalyptic battle or get choked up by an intentionally imperfect piano ballad is at first quite tricky. Once you have suspended everything you know about Ludo, and everything you know about what is or isn’t a rock opera, you’ll find yourself enveloped in the tale, anxiously waiting to find out what happens next. “We were nervous that people wouldn’t be able to follow the story,” Tim says, “but it seems so far that everyone who has heard it really got it.”

Broken Bride is in 4 parts, chronicling one man’s adventure through time, desperately trying to get back to the morning his wife died. A true pop/punk/rock opera, the story is told beautifully both sonically and lyrically, tapping into a wide range of influences and emotions, depending on the characters situation. Broken Bride is a well executed inadvertent concept album that translates surprisingly well into a live setting, as seen in the ‘enhanced’ portion of the CD. If it weren’t for the albums length, barely hitting 30 minutes, Broken Bride would fit in better with your DVDs than your CDs as it tells a fascinating and heartwarming story more successfully than most major films.



Hear two songs from Broken Bride here

Ludo on Altsounds.com
www.ludorock.com