Devon three piece Pale Blue Eyes never lose sight of hope and joy amidst the chaos and have found a way to share that with us. The clues were there for anyone lucky enough to catch one of their kinetic live performances, seeing the disinterested drawn in by their intensity is a wonderful thing.
Lucy (drums) and Matt Board (vocals/guitar), along with Aubrey Simpson (bass), are building on influences that many others have toyed with to varying degrees of enjoyment and plausibility, clearly there’s the post punk and shoegaze under and overtones, but the clincher here is their mastery of the science of Krautrock rhythmic propulsion. Get that sorted and the sky’s the limit, many try and most fall short.
What elevates Pale Blue Eyes is that all the gigging and those many hours locking eyes in dank practice rooms has yielded a natural and unforced lightness of touch that can only be the result of a musical chemistry verging on telepathy. And that’s where you get the elegance and grace underpinning this long awaited debut album.
In pole position “Globe” takes us on an angelic tour of the cosmos, packing New Order bass vibes, exhilarating synth washes and the ace in the pack, gloriously goofy backing vocals. That those voices are telling us, “you’ve got this” shouldn’t work but you know what, it worked for me, I mean who doesn’t want to be told that once in a while? In fact “Globe” ends up being a spine tingling rallying call that feels emblematic of Souvenirs as a whole.
It’s a 45 minute trip that passes at high speed, along the way the lean and mean streamlined rush of “TV Flicker” sounds like an established ‘greatest hit’ as does earlier single the motorik steamroller “Dr. Pong”.
By the time Souvenirs reaches its denouement with the heart-swelling heat haze shimmer of “Chelsea” we’ve heard ample evidence to suggest Pale Blue Eyes are in it for the long haul. These aren’t people making music to pass the time on a wet Sunday afternoon, Souvenirs is the creation of a band who have to make music and like all great debuts it’s both a culmination of their beginnings as well as a pointer to the wide open road ahead.
