-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
Artist..: Pinkshinyultrablast
Album...: Grandfeathered
GENRE...: Indie
STYLE...: Shoegaze
YEAR....: 2016
LABEL...: Club AC30 ENCODER..: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V
SOURCE..: CD BITRATE..: 968 kbps avg
TRACKS..: 8 SIZE.....: 302.22 MB
URL..: http://www.facebook.com/Pinkshiny/
- TRACKLIST
1 Initial 3:52
2 Glow Vastly 5:23
3 I Catch You Napping 5:46
4 Kiddy Pool Dream 6:03
5 Comet Marbles 6:30
6 The Cherry Pit 5:42
7 Moelkky 4:16
8 Grandfeathered 5:47
Total Playtime: 43:19
Itªs early 2016, and weªve started it with a positivity deficit. The taste of
death is on everyoneªs lips. How can I gaze up at the stars or into a
painting? How will the flowers bloom in the sunshine of early spring? Where
are our comrades and our mentors now? Are they just particles burned to ash
floating into a vast emptiness or buried in the earth? I feel confined,
suffocating on social media and recycled office air. I look in the mirror,
and Iªm almost 36. Iªm fucking drained by the aloof attitudes people still
cop. Then, suddenly, this music lilts out of the darkness and up into a deep
blue sky. It is a vapor trail. It is optimism in the ethereal. Do bands even
aspire to this?
Almost exactly one year after dropping the exquisite Everything Else Matters
, Russian group Pinkshinyultrablast return with Grandfeathered to make me
wonder if theyªve been watching that new Fox sitcom with John Stamos. All of
the hallmarks of the bandªs debut remain blissfully intact, and yet theyªve
managed to engineer an LP with even more seemingly absurd outliers than
minimalism and Radiophonic blips. You ever hear a dream pop song with a
galloping rhythm? (Glow Vastly≈ has that. Pinkshinyultrablast smash the
paradigms of the genre into a million pieces and reassemble them with a
cubist grace and pop melody that belies the amount of work I can only imagine
goes into the construction of these pieces of music. They prove itªs possible
to craft an album of ear worms with few traditional hooks. Fractal
guitar-runs dovetail into fuzz explosions, instruments weave in and out of
the mix, and memorable parts are anchored in non-repeating chains. Sound like
prog? It kind of is, but theyªve coined their style (thunder pop,≈ and Iªm
hard pressed to argue.
Grandfeathered goes prog pop. On the bandªs last album, elements of post-rock
could be heard in its twinkling guitar arpeggios. If that facet of the bandªs
music rears its head here, itªs less noticeable. In execution, many of these
tracks display a heavier approach. They still bear a passing similarity to
Mahogany, but that now has more to do with Lyubovªs vocals sounding beamed in
from The Dream of a Modern Day than it does with the rest of the band
members, who go hard in the paint for the whole damn album. The guitars get
aggressive with palm-muted rhythmic interplay like the metallic riffing
during the bridge of Humªs (Stars.≈ The bass is bright and snappy, working in
complex patterns beneath the guitars. The drums maintain an aggressive tempo
that keeps the whole album flowing in a way that feels like blasting off.
The winsome attitude is further reflected in their choice of album art. Most
of the bandªs art has been created by Lesha Galkin, co-founder of the St.
Petersburg-based design collective Dopludo. According to their site, his
focus is usually on product and furniture design. The sleeve for
Pinkshinyultrablastªs Kiddy Pool Dreams 12-inch features a car driving down a
winding, navy-colored path toward a pinkish orange horizon., suggesting a
forward momentum to something promising, like the utopian future of 1950s-era
science fiction Grandfeathered is also adorned with Galkinªs gorgeous art. In
a surreal landscape, an egg and a cylinder loom over a puddle of mirror-like
liquid streaming from a barely-visible tube. An spongy object sits in the
foreground. The title makes no more sense than being a bad pun on the
aforementioned sitcom. I can only surmise these are things meant to confuse,
like when a friend plays a trick on you but you both end up laughing anyway.
This art is an escape pod to some other space ╖ to the stars, a circulatory
system, a kitchen counter ╖ anywhere but the dark spaces of the mind where
fear lurks. Suddenly I feel a relief from anxiety. The humility of existence
slipping away again, however briefly.
*
When Russia's Pinkshinyultrablast released their long awaited debut
Everything Else Matters almost a year ago to the day, it revitalised a genre.
Quite rightly heralded as shoegaze due to its affluent use of ethereal
sounds, pedals operating as touchpapers between loud and quiet effects and
shimmering melodies, the record made a lot of the scene's leading
protagonists take a step back and reevaluate their own wares. While certain
reference points will always be difficult to shed v the likes of My Bloody
Valentine and the Cocteau Twins paved the way for song structures of this
nature to exist in the first place v Pinkshinyultrablast have clearly taken
that blueprint and added their own inimitable take to such an extent that
many of their peers now cite them as an influence.
Which is quite a remarkable feat considering none of the band claim to be
influenced by or listen to shoegaze. The other facet which sets
Pinkshinyultrablast apart from most of their peers both past and present lies
in the shape of understated vocalist Lyubov Soloveva. Always calm and
collected on stage and usually hidden by thick waves of dry ice and dense
lighting. Her angelic voice acts as an additional source of instrumentation
to the point where many of the band's compositions alter direction at the
drop of a note passing through her lips. In a world where we're constantly
told lyrics mean everything and sonics have all been done before, it's a
breathtakingly unique construct and one that lies at the heart of
Pinkshinyultrablast's true identity.
What's even more endearing about the band is their diligent and prolific
nature. Having waited six years from the release their debut EP Happy Songs
For Happy Zombies for the album, another one follows within twelve months.
Interestingly, several of the songs on Grandfeathered have been regular
staples of the band's live set for most of the past year, as anyone that's
seen them will testify. Nevertheless, that doesn't make it any more of a
vaunting experience hearing them on record in all their shimmering glory.
From the outset, Grandfeathered makes its intentions clear. Opening with a
single octave of sound, 'Initial' fuses electronic elements with sharp,
occasionally violent bursts of guitar that permeate its core. It's when
Soloveva's vocal joins the mix that its transition from feral beast to
swirling ambient soundscape comes into full effect. Indeed, at this point it
would be churlish to compare Pinkshinyultrablast to anyone else. And also
unfair to them or anyone else for that matter.
Whereas heavy guitars permeate 'Glow Vastly' from the inside like a foetus
punching its way out the womb, 'I Catch You Napping' takes the journey of a
sonic cyclone. All the time aided and abetted by Solveva's voice, humming and
cooing incessantly on the former before guiding the latter's musical excesses
to safer territories. Lead single 'Kiddy Pool Dreams' follows suit. Perhaps
the most similar in style to anything off Grandfeathered's predecessor, it's
also the most demonstrative of Pinkshinyultrablast's ability to effortlessly
change course or direction at the blink of an eye.
Both 'Comet Marbles' and 'The Cherry Pit' showcase Soloveva's mesmerising
voice in different ways. Her falsetto breaks the ice on 'Comet Marbles'
before a vicious barrage of white noise takes it to an eventual natural
conclusion. Recent 45 'The Cherry Pit' on the other hand builds gracefully
with a reflective eminence perfectly encapsulated by the singer's twisted
vocal projections, which take several unexpected diversions up to its synapse
crushing finale.
With Grandfeathered also nearing its close, its left to 'Mÿlkky' - a song
structurally similar to 'The Cherry Pit' except for Solveva's dolphin-like
cries and the shimmering jangly guitars of the title track to bring the album
to a tumultuous end.
*
Now, actually, about that genre label, shoegaze, which often can and does go
hand in hand with the technically more languid dream pop. Itªs true
Pinkshinyultrablast sports seemingly an onionªs worth of reverb and
instrumental tracks in their songs, while also intentionally burying their
vocals into the stew. However, in a subgenre that offers little wiggle room
- and is so inextricably tied, fairly or no, to a particular era v the band
rises v nay, soars v above its pigeonhole with their adventurous
arrangements, thrilling and extreme shifts in dynamics, and peppering of
other subgenre influences into the mix.
The debut, Everything Else Matters, released just a year ago, laid the bandªs
dizzying concoction out on full display, albeit, at times, in a timorous
fashion. Grandfeathered raises each point of the debut up notches v and then
some. Lead track (Initial≈ is the albumªs perfect manifesto; what begins as
an industrial-edged grind opens up into a bewitching near slow jam-like
groove, Lyubov Solovevaªs vocals wrap smoke-like above and around; it is, at
once, a more assertive and more nuanced sound that any songs of its
predecessor.
(Glow Vastly≈ and (Comet Marbles≈ both take off from 10-ton boulder-sized
riffs that bat an eyelash toward such neo-prog-metal acts as Tool. While
Grandfeathered amps up the monstrous licks from the debut, Soloveva is
counted on throughout to provide the heavenly counterpoint. Singles (Kiddy
Pool Dreams≈ and (The Cherry Pit≈ show off a math-rock level of precision in
their interplay, pushing the band even further from the shackles of their
shoegaze tag. There obviously are lyrics here, and good luck to you in trying
to catch or decipher any, yet rarely has it ever mattered so little as
Soloveva bravely functions as much as a fifth instrument to the mix as
anything else.
The moral of the story here is, if any, to look past any subgenre labeling of
Pinkshinyultrablast v even if you, like me, dig that sort of thing.
Pinkshinyultrablast isnªt so much offering something new to or pushing
shoegaze anywhere it hasnªt already been. They are flat out transcending it,
offering a sound all their own that is frighteningly powerful and
overwhelmingly beautiful.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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* NuHS we miss you! *
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