Pale Dian - Feral Birth
Microbes, scales, spores, lost cells: a set of anguishes travel mute making people talk a lot. They create a constant mess and fire.
We find them, too, in the faux-celestial music of Pale Dian, the Austin band led by the sovereign of semi-darkness Ruth Ellen Smith, capable of creating pathos, tension, out of a radiant propensity to illuminate that which must be shaken by critical analysis and which makes emotions an open-air plaza, always available for access. It is music for cloudy souls, fascinated by constant changes of mood, of musical styles that seek space and continuity, in embraces at the edge of the stratosphere. Magnetic, intriguing, the band released Feral Birth, a summary and extension of a clear ability to unsettle the peaceful intention of listening to an accommodating album.
And that is why it ends up being amazing. Truly intense, like a probe that uncovers the reality of our inner frictions. They dig in, tickle with songs programmed to make our belly the theatre of the landslide.
One is immersed in guitars that bar the way to simplicity, diamonds as children of the effect of sensory hallucinations, with the intent to wound, creating the hiatus with vocals that are often a walk on the clouds.
We are breathless as we are continually confronted with the vastness of the scenarios that open up, thanks to a tamed sadness, the avalanche of dreams that fall within the traps that their talent maneuvers with great skill. This record is an expanse of witches, united to laugh showing their teeth in their evil grin. Corroborating, vibrant, sweaty, this work decimates the forces making listening difficult: purity and continually touching lightly originality causes an absurd, splendid effort.
Their songs explore this time rich in failures, with an increasingly selfish politics, bringing our attention towards the chaos that is put under pressure, ending in non-denial. One often dreams out of despair, frustration, loneliness, and this second album by the American band is capable of doing it well, even adding light drops, in the gas of beauty trying to get out, succeeding.
With Dark-Pop structures and Dreampop weighed down by rain-soaked wings, the four artisans of mystery use electronic music to stop excess light, ending up gliding decidedly into Nightmare-Pop, perfectly fitting in their souls.
They are immense dizziness, senses that enter lost in the place of not-knowing, an attempt to resist their continuous fascination, with tracks that are velvety but show that the strength does not lie in the rebellion of the wattage, in the roughness that reaps acclaim only from those who do not know and much less appreciate silence. Instead, in these eleven compositions we are able to hear silence because it is invoked by atmospheres that seem like continually needy breaths, where chaos is generated only by their beauty.
They insist often towards sensual melodies interrupted by rumbles, because it is in their DNA, they do it well and with good reason: they have the maturity necessary for an aptitude to make imbalances evident, and their metamorphosis conjugates everything toward an attraction that becomes more and more evident with the passage of time. With creations perfectly knotted by excellent production that puts all their gifts perfectly inside our hearts.
There is no need whatsoever to look into their background to understand how much flour comes from their sack: there is plenty of it and it is crunchy, soft, energetic and their past listenings, if any, are multiple and balancedly hidden or, if revealed, take nothing away from their expressive talent.
It seems crazy that such music exists nowadays: we thought we had it all in our empty hands and the awe of genre definitions, and instead we find ourselves beautifully immersed in a mixed blend that can only give way also to something new advancing within these beautiful grooves.
And that is what makes this the most interesting album, in terms of originality, of this 2022, because of the variety and breadth of elements that turn it into a record to study.
It never descends into banality, never into tricks that want to deny an expressive void: we are before and within a cataclysm able to create discomfort and rapture, finally bringing the breath to die, as it deserves.
Here, on the other hand, there are tons of class and good taste, a brilliant work of minds that seem to have come out of the laboratory of madness educated to give sense matter for development.
I would like to recommend it to everyone, warmly, but I can't kid myself: such a beautiful album would be understood by a few people, it would deserve recognition and falling in love over and over again, continuously. It should find a constant word of mouth, to reach everywhere. For it nourishes and leads us to intense zones, where just listening is enough to feel loved.
It is now a matter of putting one's eyes deep inside this eleven-legged delightful puppy to get lost…
Song by Song
1 All Anointed
A slow, circular explosion envelops our listening, amongst sly guitars and a drum machine of Coldwave derivation, for a very suggestive introductory moment. Vocals are a descent into the dreamy side of 4ad but the song remains close to something more original, in the cathode mantra of multiple visions.
2 Truth or Consequence
And it is ecstasy, surprise, enchantment that shakes our bones, in this machine of beauty that between a hinted electronic music and dreampop masked by guitars that know how to be hostile makes everything precise in the sonic contemplation of a dreamlike feeling, interspersed with Noise Pop particles that make listening intriguing. And the scent of the Orient in Ruth's vocals is a marvel that moves forward.
3 Melt
Would you have ever thought it? A dub flow with reggae particles seem the basis of a precise tumult that can be confusing. Instead, all it takes is a few seconds of waiting and we are swimming in clouds of the most minimalist shoegaze, with noise atoms spraying vibrations and the bass pushing on an evocative harmonic plane. The guitar sweeps freely in its wanderings and the voice is one long note which surrounds us, all in a syncopated and neurotic rhythmic tide.
4 Misanthrope
The beginning is again traumatic: a Darkwave microcosm seems to keep our breath anchored in darkness, with a guitar shimmering in the pregnancy of a nocturnal atmosphere. Then Ruth closes our eyes and we rise into the silence of the starry sky, with a pulsing bass holding hands with her voice. They are sparkles with dreampop inputs, but nothing can be definitive: their celestial boat makes us swim in the sea of genres, styles, for a magnetic track…
5 Relapse
Another paralyzing din, making the skin vibrate: Relapse is a harmonic care, with guitars like dew surrounding to make us savor the intensity of existence. The combination of bass and voice is ecstasy of light, an ensemble that takes us into the Dark-Pop zone, where joy and pain find the point of contact. The guitar becomes a child of the best Bauhaus for a result that seduces the pulse.
6 Ballad of a Girl
There is no shortage of surprises: here is the new candle that touches and takes us to the mid-80s, with electronic contamination and expedients that give immense vigor to this nocturnal creature, devoid of consciousness, wandering inside our proclaimed joy. Everything is placed in a passage track, where getting lost is the place of their skill and our new identity...
7 Vacant and Naked
Between Vapor-Wave, Cocteau Twins precipices and an attitude of Pop vocals in the best tradition, everything unfolds in a scene where sound is the protagonist, with the ability to write a song that smells of tears and embrace. One is suspended, they seem to warn us that daydreams are the best....
8 True Love
Let there be room for fear that does not make one tremble but think: the rhythmic and melodic zones are permanent streams of blood-chilling breaths. Then there's always her diamond-like voice switching to the high register like a flight of free eagles, capable of feeding on oxygen. A dream, with devilishly perfect notes.
9 Find Her
The most precious piece arrives and it is the weeping of the soul: you suffer, you enjoy, you enter the synth to find a hand with a wet black rose. As if it were the result of baroque music painted by electronic hints, here one cannot help but become trembling and thinking beings.
10 Emily
When beauty becomes a gastric lavage: here everything is purified in the dreamy mood mixed with mystery, the torches of fear slowly entering to defraud our breaths. Magnetic, mighty and beloved of the gods, the song is the flight of every beat to dispersion with its dreampop guitars.
11 Decline Regrowth Decay
Between hints of The Cure and Pale Saints, and vocals that take us to Toni Halliday's Curves devoid of effects on her voice, we are faced with a song with a great psychedelic core through this guitar that releases curiosity and din. Perfect classy performance to give the feeling that their talent cannot be gagged by musical genres and styles. Here, this is the demonstration, and heaven applauds moved.
