“Thru Evry Cell” by Purple Pilgrims

Purple Pilgrims  have just released an LP ‘Eternal Delight’ – on 26 February on the US label Not Not Fun. Here’s what may be an atypical song from them and from the album.

“Thru Evry Cell” is the most conventionally song-structured recording I’ve heard so far from Purple Pilgrims. But even here they manage to sound utterly dislocated from everyday reality, particularly the way the voices are almost lost in a narcotic haze of lush reverb.

This is great – it’s breezy, full of pop hooks and a welcoming production. But at the same time it manages to still carry some not-quite-right menace in a similar way to Julee Cruise’s “Twin Peaks” soundtrack songs. In fact if David Lynch is looking for some music for the proposed new series of “Twin Peaks” he would find a perfect fit with Purple Pilgrims.

Maybe it’s just a sense from listening to  their previous recordings, but it seems like there’s a shadow behind every apparently bright and colourful sounding moment here and a sense of foreboding that there is something lurking in those shadows which seeks each listeners’ soul.

Here’s a Radio NZ video of the song performed in their Coromandel base.

There’s a video for another song from the album – “Forever” – on Vimeo here. Can’t wait to hear the whole album now.

 

“A Bottled Brain” by Lucy Hunter

Strap yourselves in folks, it’s time for piano ballads from the edge of the planet from Opposite Sex multi-instrumentalist Lucy Hunter, with the disturbed, unique oddness of “A Bottled Brain” via The Attic Singles Club series.

Lucy’s solo performances on piano have elements of Gothic show tunes about them. Dramatic, melodic, with vivid images, baroque piano flourishes, and occasional dissonant touches to break the spell. All of those are here on “A Bottled Brain”.

The Attic Singles Club releases have featured on Pop Lib a bit. One original song, one cover selected by The Attic. This time around its a David Lynch song and it’s just perfect. Perfectly weird. Lucy on piano, bass and trumpet and that vocal performance is part malevolence, part helium-toned freakiness, thanks to Adrian Ng’s inventive production.

I’d love to hear a whole album from Lucy like this. She’s a courageous innovator and risk-taker. Her lyrics (assisted by the music) often create fictional worlds rich in nightmarish imagery. I love the sometimes unconventional approach taken to her playing and song-writing – breaking the rules and challenging, while remaining accessible if you invest the time to connect with the spirit of the music.

[Photos: The Attic]

‘Buy Something New’ by Bad Sav

Bad Sav are a three piece band from Dunedin. More correctly they are from Port Chalmers, a small decrepit port town on the harbour 15 minutes drive north of Dunedin City.

It’s a place that always reminds me of ‘Twin Peaks’ for some reason. Maybe it’s the people. Maybe it’s the laid back weirdness vibe going on. Lots of bars, maroon velvet curtains, odd people eyeing you up strange, familiar faces & good friends & that oversized container crane machinery at the port towering incongruously over the 19th century main street stone buildings like some mechanical praying mantis family. Oh & damn fine coffee too at The Port Royale Café on the main street.

Bad Sav have a laid back weirdness vibe of their own going on. So Port Chalmers is a perfect place for Bad Sav to call home. Port Chalmers also has my ‘home-away-from-home’ – Chick’s Hotel – where all three members of Bad Sav either reside or work these days.

Bad Sav has been around as a band for a few years now, but always seemed a bit half-hearted, jokey & unfocused until the last 6 months. Last year they morphed from a kind of noisy grunge-scuzz outfit into a noisy post-punk/ shoegaze doom pop trio. And they are very good indeed.

“Buy Something New” may only be three chords but those chords carry the weight of society & its consumerist mantras upon their shoulders: “Buy something new/ To replace something new”. Sometimes simple repetition is all you need. This builds and twists and sighs and rages beautifully over 3 and a half minutes. If you buy something new today it should be this:

Their set is full of big churning masterpieces built on a weighty foundation of propulsive New Order-esque bass lines from Lucinda King (also in electronica goth-pop trio Death & The Maiden) and layered with cathedral-sized guitar sound walls from Hope Robertson (Birdation, Kilmore Girls & Snapper drummer, formerly guitarist of The Doyleys & Zan Batman Circus) and pushed along by Mike McLeod’s drumming (The Shifting Sands). They played a thrilling set at ReFuel last week. Their closing song, which I think is called ‘Pets’ and sung in extraordinary fashion by Hope, was beautifully chaotic and epic.

Bad Sav at the Crown Hotel, Dunedin 2012

‘Amnesia’ by Strange Harvest (Video)

“Would you disconnect me and leave me alone?”

‘Amnesia’ is a song from Dunedin darkwave duo Strange Harvest’s second album – “Inside a Replica city”. I wrote about this song here on PopLib last year.

“The thing I love about Strange Harvest’s particular brand of ice-cool electro-pop is that, beneath those surface impressions of songs about a kind of semi-robotic or replicant dystopian future, there is so much human vulnerability involved, sometimes observed in concise but forensic detail.”

Now the talented creative team of Phoebe MacKenzie and Emily Berryman have made a dark and haunting video for the song. It captures the mood (and some of Dunedin’s local coastal scenery) brilliantly.