Pastels/Tenniscoats – Two Sunsets
I really like both of these bands individually, but as all-time indie arranged marriages go, this superficially perfect match doesn’t quite dunk the biscuit, as far as I am concerned.
It’s fey and wan and awfy, awfy twee but honestly it lacks bite. Imagine a cover of some of Belle & Sebastian’s dreamier material, but without any rhythmic zip, melodic inventiveness or vocal bite. That comparison material is pretty close to the limit in terms of being just a little too breezy for my taste, and this album is a considerable distance the wrong side of that particular boundary.
Before her rather lovely solo debut Amorino, Isobel Campbell wrote and recorded songs under the name of The Gentle Waves, and gentle they most certainly were. So gentle in fact that they generally made no impact whatsoever. This is just the same – there’s just nothing to get hold of or, conversely, nothing which makes any real attempt to get hold of you.
The ambient, loungey atmosphere can also be reminiscent of a heavily diluted version of Stereolab, if you’re looking for comparisons, and the Japanese vocal reinforces this similarity. Again, the comparison does this record no real credit, because even at their most dreamy, Stereolab were never too far away from punctuating your incipient drowsiness with a burst of crackling noise or a shriek of feedback. They also had tunes, however sparingly they used them.
Basically, the recipe seems perfect, but the results somehow lack zest. I can think of a dozen In the Fishtank collaborations which far exceed this in terms of both interest and enjoyment.
Pastels/Tenniscoats – Yomigaeru
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Pastels/Tenniscoats – About You
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the pastels are gods! but when i heard this stuff i had a similar reaction – too too too fey…actually, too fucking gay. the pastels where always a bit gay but i could tolerate because of their endearing amateurishness. and i’m all for cute female asian vocals but this stuff is so sweet my diabetes is acting up as i listen.
We’ve clearly taken a different path of late as I really like this. Sure it wanders into murky self indulgent ethereal warbling/muso-dirge, but that doesn’t happen that often. The first 3 tracks on the album are just lovely.
As an aside, didn’t this album get released last year? I’m fairly sure it did (seem to remember receiving a one sheet sometime in November time?), but there seems to be an up-swing in promo & PR activity on it at the moment.
You make a fair point about the sorta lack of “punctuation” but, otherwise, I think this basically does what it says on the tin (to borrow an expression from your side of the Atlantic).
You also succeeded in posting perhaps my two least favorite tracks. But I was looking forward to this record and wasn’t disappointed. It’s not as good as the new Clientele album but, as a pair, they’ve been soundtracking my autumn quite nicely.
Chris, my thoughts exactly. GROW A FUCKING PAIR!
DC – Could well be, but I only just heard of its existence recently, so I didn’t realise it wasn’t fairly immediately recent. Not that it matters much I suppose.
Dunno, Toad. It’s a strange one. I think maybe it was released in some territories, withdrawn or not pushed, & now ‘released’ ‘proper’. But I definitely knew of its existence back last year… just can’t recall from who… because I remember being surprised by the collaboration.
The Clientele album is indeed very good, Dev.
This has been on the cards for years -after all, we were at an Edinburgh gig where they played together over two years ago! I like this a lot, but as The Wire pointed out, it’s not going to win them any new fans.