It’s almost uncannily fitting that Trish Keenan only exists now in memory, because Keenan was never too firmly tethered to the present. The British singer-songwriter was at a ’60s-themed psychedelic club, after all, when she met musician James Cargill in the mid-’90s, and for the next 20 years she’d excavate cultural and spiritual references of yore into the indietronica band they formed together. Broadcast were a singular group from the start, and it took them a while to find their niche: Their big break came shortly after their formation when their non-album song “The Book Lovers” was featured in Austin Powers: International Man Of Mystery, a film that often dragged ’60s aesthetics and British humor into sheer mockery. Broadcast’s girl-group harmonies and tinny synths suited Mike Myers’ free-love, technicolored escapades, but Keenan never set out for mere nostalgia bait. She wanted her art to feel it existed outside of typical time and space. In that endeavor, she succeeded, right up until she died of pneumonia in 2011 at only 42 years old.
