The Pastels

I've got a bunch of stuff up at Dusted and Blurt lately...haven't really gotten around to posting it. (Still super busy with middle school track, an investment blog that is now my biggest client and sundry other financial writing gigs....)

I thought I'd start catching up with this review of the Pastels' latest, Slow Summits, which I liked probably the best of all the stuff I've reviewed lately.



The Pastels
Slow Summits
Domino

The video for “Check My Heart” starts with young girls shimmying, lost in the sun-through-showers lyricism of The Pastels’ first single in 16 years. Hedonism gives way, a little later in the film, to a more studied air, as band members flip through stacks of old vinyl. The video is kind of perfect in the way it encapsulates The Pastels’ appeal, half blind pleasure and half knowing reference. The band is history, one of the main instigators of a Scottish pop scene documented on the NME’s C86 cassette, but the past sits very lightly on its fifth studio album, Slow Summits. No pressed flowers here drily document past glories. These songs are fresh, ephemeral beauties, still beaded with dew.

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Oh yeah, and since I'm flogging that video...