Pijn
From Low Beams Of Light
Like a pine shedding its dead needles (or a pigeon moulting its old feathers; go by preference), Pijn’s latest metamorphosis has come bundled with a sense of rejuvenation. Not that they needed it, as one of post-rock’s most respected and lauded names to emerge in the last decade. More so, the on-and-off nature of their existence has needed a pin stuck in it for a while; discounting a reimagining of their debut Loss in 2020, major activity since 2019’s collab-band with Conjurer, Curse The Metal Hands, has been basically zeroed out. But, lo—From Low Beams Of Hope is where the new age of Pijn begins, in predictably spellbinding form.
To cover the most obvious point first, there have been some big changes undergone. Pijn are now a fully instrumental act on this new album; the only cogent voice to be heard comes from snippets of poetic narration woven through the opener Our Endless Hours. Moreover, the sonic palette has become far grander, now incorporating regular violins and cello, saxophone, tape loops and the general brushing away of post-rock’s aloof demeanour. There’s a bit more colour in place now, either in intensified or washed-out forms over the rolling hills of tracks that never stoop below nine minutes in length. Coming together at about 45 minutes overall, it’s surprising how digestible this can feel. Maybe it’s not strictly ‘accessible’ from Pijn, but the closest their orbit has come to that.
That’s still a ways off, mind, absolutely by design. A curated experience like this revels in the chance to be grand and operatic in vision, evidenced by each track’s movements and seismic shifts. There’s a bright spark in the midst of the calamity, though, which Pijn are keen to not lose their grip on. It’s why On The Far Side Of Morning soars as it does, lifted on high by crashing swells of light in its strings and guitar, and launched all the further off the back of Carved Expanse’s bleaker, heavier…expanse(?) And in trailing-off moments of soft guitar that’s barely there, and the swaddling reverb representative of the awakening unknown, Pijn’s hand for real delicacy is just as deft as their grandiosity. The album is borderline flawless compositionally, and not a million miles away in its ability to wrench out an emotion or two when it hits at the right angle.
At the end of the day, that’s exactly what post-rock needs to achieve; anything else is just gravy. It’s not minimising Pijn’s efforts to say that, not when the standard for this genre needs to be higher to facilitate its best stuff. That’s why so much post-rock ends up forgotten, or evaporating on impact. Pijn, meanwhile, have stuck it out and grown immeasurably, to where they easily could be among the upper echelon of what’s on offer. They probably are, in fact; it’s been a while since a post-rock album has felt as purposeful as From Low Beams Of Hope. Even just to earmark the beginning of the next Pijn Dynasty, it’s worth its colossal weight in gold.
For fans of: Russian Circles, Pelican, Explosions In The Sky
‘From Low Beams Of Light’ by Pijn is released on 28th June on Floodlit Recordings.
Love Letter
Everyone Wants Something Beautiful
What are the odds that a new band featuring two ex-members of Defeater would sound like Defeater? Well, when one of them is Jay Maas, who’s produced for a billion others to lend his expertise in red-raw emotional hardcore, pretty high. Throw in additional alumni of Verse, and those odds are skyrocketing even further. Might as well rename them to Bridge 9: The Band, seeing as this is as pure a representation of that label’s expected sound as you can get. And that shouldn’t be read as anything other than a compliment, when Love Letter’s bar of quality is this high already.
Naturally, that’s to be expected when they’re cycling through shades of not only Defeater, but La Dispute, Touché Amoré, Pianos Become The Teeth and the rest of the Shirt-Tugging Gang. As effectively an extension of everything those bands have ever brought to the table (albeit without much for themselves), Love Letter know exactly where to place focus and double down. The vocals from Quinn Murphy swing between shredded blisters of intensity and quivering spoken-word; the overall tone is cold and bleak, with the roaring guitars within buffeting further. A song like Settlements, meanwhile, amplifies the baleful weight of Love Letter’s world in its resonant ache, remaining such an important trope for bands like these to utilise.
The use of the word ‘trope’ might feel like something of a backhanded dig, but it’s more a necessary figure of speech in this situation. Apart from specific semantic links to war and genocide healthy with 2024 prescience, Everyone Wants Something Beautiful isn’t afforded the most liberal amount of wiggle room. None of them are, to be clear, which makes it borderline impossible to condemn Love Letter for it. Sure, you’ve heard these ideas before—likely arranged in these exact fashions—but the systematic peeling back of skin layers to nick away at the heartstrings doesn’t get less intense each time, does it? Perhaps, on that token, Love Letter could do with a few instances that feel definitively theirs. New Anthemic and Misanthropic Holiday Or Vacation rank among the album’s standouts, but even they’re closer to variations on the theme.
If you’re actively seeking out Love Letter, though—likely because of the connection to bands among the immutable inroads to this exact style—the theme obviously appeals. There’s zero chance you’ll wind up disappointed by a group of consummate professionals and scene architects doing it all over again, regardless of any ‘sameness’. Just on its face, Everyone Wants Something Beautiful has the thrills and chokehold potential that’s a prerequisite, in an entirely positive way. It hits every mark you want it to with shockingly little time and effort wasted, and in the end, does complete justice to both the legacies of those involved, and the scene as a whole. It’s exactly the sort of addition to the established lineup that you’d want.
For fans of: Defeater, Touché Amoré, La Dispute
‘Everyone Wants Something Beautiful’ by Love Letter is released on 28th June on Iodine Recordings.
beccs
stay moist
It’s been a minute since we’ve had an honest-to-goodness alt-pop chancer come around. Back in the days before Halsey was good and when Melanie Martinez was still awful, you’d get a fair few cropping up trying to replicate their successes, before fizzling out promptly after to never be heard from again. Time removed hasn’t exactly produced ‘fondness’, but it’s nice to see the sound not merely cast to the roadside after so little worth came from it. Thus, even if calling beccs a ‘revivalist’ is pushing it, the efforts on this debut EP has that old alt-pop angle twitching on the table. For a sound that was already firmly a cadaver in a lot of its ‘heyday’, that’s some good going.
It’s not out of the question, however, that most of that reaction is due to time away. Had you thrown beccs among the mid-2010s crop she’s invoking, chances are you might not have been that much more enthused. Anachronisms remain in place—the blank thumps that stir up through I Don’t Do Fun, and the dark-pop lumber of Jealous Bitch, clanking and unwieldy as ever. To be fair, they’re hard angles to update, but beccs is plenty capable of skirting past them, to where they kind of only feel here at all for authenticity’s sake. After all, they aren’t more appealing than the rounder Good Comin’, or dark-pop with actual depth and reverberance on f 0 0 d.
By the nature of stay moist as a five-track EP, the fact that no two tracks overlap that much points it in the direction of a sampler that a lot of artists at the beginning of their run tend to put out. It’s all about showing range and potential lines to exacerbate, which beccs pulls off well. On average, stay moist has more good potential directions than bad, an assuredly better start than is common to have. Of course, beccs contributes to that herself in no small part, as a clearer, more expressive singer far removed from an era of painfully hemmed-in, compressed mouthpieces. It does justice to the ‘pop’ side of alt-pop, especially with some more overt histrionics à la London Grammar on Rage In My Veins.
Overall, stay moist comes together as a more elegant take on alt-pop of a decade past, with the usual trimmings given a far more appealing do-up. As a vehicle for letting out ugly emotions rather than having them fester, it already takes off with greater ease, even when considering some of its poorer choices. And with beccs as a considerable talent at the centre of it, there could be some real traction to occupy a currently-emptier gap in the market. Perhaps it’s not worth moulding the seconding coming of the scene at large around this, but beccs on her own can stick around. She’s good.
For fans of: Halsey, London Grammar, PVRIS
‘stay moist’ by beccs is released on 28th June.
Terminals
Baptise
As far as ‘things new bands have done to make an early impression’ stories go, hiring an Airbnb and transforming it into a studio to record their debut EP definitely puts Terminals’ name on the board. It also makes you wonder how patient those neighbours must have been, too, given that this is by no means a restrained or subdued listen. ‘Shoegaze’ on its own already erects a wall of noise, and some easy-to-pin frequencies from Radiohead, Deftones and Loathe are the reinforced concrete holding it together. At least they’d have gotten the first tastes of something pretty airtight right out the box, so it’s not all bad.
From four tracks and an interlude, Terminals evidently know what they’re doing and exactly how to do it. As trade standards dictate, they sound huge and dramatic, as they pile on layers of gauzy bliss and seismic demolition is equal amounts. The killer app of Terminals is James Cohu’s bass, not for any considerable dynamism but as the most magnetic component of their entire musical DNA. To nitpick, maybe a little more fortifying and rounding out could work, but you’re also not escaping how it utterly munches through Depths and the title track as such a huge cornerstone. For anyone whose main bugbear about shoegaze or ambience is a lack of form, Terminals are pushing their solution hard.
It’s a case where it’s a nice new tweak to a sound that ultimately gives the same results in the end. Baptise won’t be mistaken for anything else, but there’s enough going on for it not to be swallowed up. Fitting when the title track amplifies the aura of reverb around James Whitehouse’s vocals, where a lesser vocalist wouldn’t be able to flex the insane power and register he has to keep afloat. Especially on Big Sky, there’s an early Matt Bellamy vibe about it, proving perfect to relay songs about scaling darkness of the mind and finding light once again. As common an arc as that is, the execution (and, subsequently, how deftly those thematic lights and shades can be mirrored within it) gives it a notable dash of freshness. Britrock banality, this is not; hell, it’s not even shoegaze banality, for all that goes into it.
So, yeah…this is one to keep an eye on. There’s actually been a considerable influx of brand new bands lately that seemingly have their path mapped out from the jump, all of whom aren’t missing with their first few shots. Add Terminals among them, then, in an instance where raw quality and technique speaks for itself. What’s more, they’re tapping into a sector of alternative music that can be very hard to nail, and proceeding to do just that. They definitely got their money’s worth from that Airbnb.
For fans of: Deftones, Radiohead, early Muse
‘Baptise’ by Terminals is released on 3rd July.
Words by Luke Nuttall
