Album Review: Imagine If We Could Just Keep Driving

John Guy Howell and Rachel Bailey return to the indie-folk scene with their 5th Broken Heartbreakers album, Imagine If We Could Just Keep Driving. A stunning record, written and recorded to perfection that only the patience and grace of an 11-year recording hiatus can bring. Like a sunny day in spring, it’s warm, it’s bright and it’s bursting with the cozy feels of renaissance that the band has cultivated for their listeners. As a husband-and-wife duo, Howell and Bailey flick back and forth between lead vocals throughout the 11 tracks. Their voices are so entwined and you can hear the strong bond and love they share for one another in their harmonies. There is a trust about them, knowing just when to give one another their time to shine in their respective leads and when to hype each other up with harmony, like good matrimony should.

Lead single How Long Is Too Long begins the album with an acoustic lead melody by Howell, taking the song on a journey of search and fulfilment, while looping back on itself with such satisfying resolution. Bailey’s lyrics are those of yearning and her vocals match the desperate lyrical tone of someone who’s longing and plight needs answering. They are called the Broken Heartbreakers after all. ‘Holding your breath it’s a dangerous game, better to know that the seasons change” The words come from experience in longevity but as the title suggests, How Long Is Too Long asks a question hung by a string of fragility and self-doubt.

What Is For You is a throwback to the carefree pop songs from the 60’s. An incredibly sunny tune filled with vibrant harmonies and a string section to boot. It shares a very familiar tone to Goldenhorse’s 2002 album Riverhead. Another band with a similar female/male vocal dynamic. Like grapes ripening on the vine, this track is something to get excited about and What Is For You is a true highlight of the album.

The final track, Imagine If We Could Just Keep Driving, is an incredible closer full of beautiful droning synthesizers and guitar playing. Bailey’s vocals come in sounding their most delicate and ethereal yet, layered in gorgeous harmony carrying the sole song title lyric over and over again. The song is building up to something truly special, then the drums kick in to set everything in motion. Paul McLennan-Kissel takes on drumming duties on this record and within the band for the past 6 years. What he has done here with the slow-paced nature of the album is truly astonishing. His pitter-pattering of the snare drum on Yesterday replicates the cold rain on a roof in a song about staying inside. Or even the resistance and subtlety given on Now That You Know, treating the song with care and knowing when to hold back.

The band have been together since 2002, and this new album might be their best work yet after almost a quarter century of making music together. It’s an album that rewards you with something new on repeated listens and plays extremely well with the change of the seasons. But How Long Is Too Long to wait for the next Broken Heartbreakers album? The answer would be another 11 years.

Albums to complement The Broken Heartbreakers – Imagine If We Could Just Keep Driving

The Chills – Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs – 2025

Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog – 2007

The Reds, Pinks and Purples – Everything You Ever Loved – 2022