"I am generous, oh sooo generous..."
Fences as a construct or construction, as a mental limitation we put on ourselves or a physical barrier is a sort of bi-polarizing entity. I mean they can keep the baddies out but can also keep the goodies in. They can be a saving grace or a prison. This notion came to mind when listening to the hyper avant pop urgency of "Fences" by the art rock Victoria based project Pastel Blank centered around the feverish and fertile mind of Angus Watt. The inside out puzzling lyrics, acerbic guitar shapes and stunning artistic sleight of hand has many referencing Pavement and Talking Heads commonplace and while those references makes some sense, there is a lovely frenetic sense here that those bands don't have. The wide eyed sensibility, the algebraic math rock-ian moves make me think more of an amalgam of artists like Oingo Boingo, Devo, Sparks and Modest Mouse.
But there is no use in comparisons anyway, I mean any description or reference is toward iconic other artists unimportant because Angus Watt and Pastel Blank are cutting their own sonic path, one that is wonderfully perplexing and fucking amazing.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://www.instagram.com/pastel.blank/
https://open.spotify.com/track/6f5Kc40OoXqJwr9r3rauNG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVdhpGoBqCE
https://pb.fanlink.to/PastelBlanc
from spotify:
Art-rock and funk join hands in a marriage of stutter and groove, officiated by Pastel Blank. Formed in 2017, the Victoria-based project is led by Angus Watt. Pulling influence from the jerky rhythms and genre-blending curiosity of Talking Heads as well as the interlocking guitar-work of Canadian post-punk luminaries Women, the music of Pastel Blank cloaks experimentation in pop-minded song structure. Skeletal, wobbly guitars squeeze around the propulsive engine of thumping bass and drums, driving the beat forward as Watt’s percussive voice weaves a stream of cryptics into tongue-in-cheek wordplay reminiscent of Stephen Malkmus or Dan Bejar. In February 2020, Pastel Blank released Cinema Is Cheap, a standalone single written and recorded in a hazy fervour over the course of one night in a small, airless room at a former band house. In December 2020, writing and demo work on Pastel Blanc, the band’s debut EP, commenced. The album, which will be produced and engineered by David Parry (Loving, Alice Phoebe Lou, Jons), is a tightly packaged collection of jittery and joyous songs, oblique stories, and above all - a through line groove to move the listener.
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Pastel Blank, Victoria based, avant pop, math rockian, alternative rock, art rock, art punk, post punk, avant rock, "Fences", art rock project, led by Angus Watt,
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