…this new edition runs over two discs with the album being packaged with the ‘Fine Friend’ EP and a great selection of previously unheard tracks and demos as handpicked by the band.
A letdown can still be a strong record. Pale Saints’ second LP In Ribbons (1992) was an instantly memorable gilded masterwork, as texturally splendid as it was jarring and creative. But then enigmatic singer Ian Masters walked, taking his songwriting and bass playing with him, as evidenced by his moody and momentous LP Spoonfed Hybrid. Slow Buildings is nonetheless proof that Pale Saints were wise to carry on with Meriel Barham stepping up to full-time vocalist and former Heart Throbs member Colleen Browne joining on bass. No question, Masters is missed.
Category: shoegaze
Picture this: You’re lying face down on your bed on a beautiful spring afternoon; you haven’t opened the curtains in days. Your phone is on Do Not Disturb — not that anyone’s texting you anyway, you’ve been such a bummer since she dumped you — with one caveat: You’ll answer the ring, allow it to disrupt your endless wallowing, if the voice on the other line belongs to her.
Alien Boy make music for precisely this scenario, and the dozens of John Hughes-ian permutations that remind us why we call it a crush. In the world of Alien Boy, infatuation is dire, existential, and all-consuming. Why love at all, they ask, if you aren’t going to commit yourself completely? Since its inception in 2015, the Portland, Oregon four-piece has paired a sense of infinite longing…