Manhattan’s Richard Melville Hall played in several punk bands before becoming a globally famous producer of electronic music. Pink Must – aka Brooklyn-based duo More Eaze and Lynn Avery – began as a ‘remote grunge collaboration’, though their self-titled album has more in common with the collage approach of Moby than the frantic nihilism of Nirvana. Pink Must won’t immediately assault your ears; it’ll sneak up on them and softly demand that it be listened to on repeat.
First track ‘Morphe Sun’ is a chilled blend of crackle, glitchy beats, and warped vocals. If The Beach Boys had recorded Kid A, it would probably have sounded like this. ‘Disappointed’ is driven by a strident guitar riff, around which wedding violin flutters and deadpan, autotuned vocals weave in and out. The first few seconds of ‘Away’ appear to be the sound of someone walking down a marbled corridor like janitor Carl Reed in The Breakfast Club. Skittering beats underlay acoustic guitar – think Beck’s ‘Loser’ slowed down – and there’s more seemingly incongruous yet perfectly chosen violin.
The first third of ‘Himbo’ is Kid A noodling and/or the sound of Nasa tuning into an alien frequency. Lumbering, bluesy guitar is then mixed with reversed mutterings, Arcade Fire violin, and surf guitar strums. A hypnagogic ‘Nightswimming’? Why not? More strings kick off ‘Corporate Ladder’ like the backdrop to a tragic, mist-ridden Tarkovsky scene, then a DJ Shadow beat makes an entrance before giving way to laid back bass and the contradictory assertion that “I don’t think it matters…My heart is still in tatters.”
‘Cost of Living’ creeps along at an appropriate dirge pace. Reverbed vocals pan in and out like a prison light beam. We are all in the panopticon, at the mercy of money. ‘Long in the Arms’ is perhaps the most, dare I say, conventional track on Pink Must. It’s not quite verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle-eight-chorus, but you could imagine it being on the radio and not meeting resistance from your passengers. The vocals have a My Bloody Valentine ring to them, except that you can make out the words. Words such as “I don’t feel like living when I am living…I can feel the distance, I can feel the distance.” Hardly euphoric, but you won’t care with all that jangly guitar on display.
The bends is a famously colloquial term for an ocean-based affliction whereby bubbles congregate around elbows and knees like tadpoles on a lily pad. On ‘Karaoke of the Bends’, Lynne Avery sings “Karaoke of the Bends summon me into your arms”, though it’s not certain whether she’s reminiscing about the comfort of performing a Radiohead pastiche or conveying a peaceful descent into oblivion. The track is a thudding, funereal march with discordant strings and ambiguous voices: not waving but drowning. In contrast, the acoustic guitar and reverb-drenched plucks on ‘Blessings’ are the sound of peacefully ascending, glimpsing the ribboned sun through the ripples of the sea.
If hypnagogic music is all tape fuzz and nostalgia, then Pink Must could just about be categorised as such. However, it avoids the clever-clever hipster trap with ease (or should that be Eaze?) It’s both lo-fi and vast, playful and heartfelt. Why dream about the past when you can listen to Pink Must in the present?
Pink Must is out now via Bandcamp and 15 Love.
Pink Must: Instagram | Bandcamp
Review by Neil Laurenson
Photograph by Laura Brunisholz