Album Review : The Big Pink - A Brief History Of Love
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
For a duo, The Big Pink manage to make quite a racket at times on their 11-track debut. But for all the noisy bits, there are sure some wonderfully sweet poppy moments alongside to even things up.
Approaching this from the a position of total ignorance, 'Crystal Visions' grabs my interest immediately; the delicate opening motif gives way to fuzz obtained wholesale from the JAMC. The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Interpol and recent arrivals Crocodiles all come to mind in this song and throughout the album. At no point do they ever sound like The Band, so their choice of name is an enduring mystery to me.
'Too Young To Love' is a swirly psychedelic melange of driving guitars and mesmeric vocals over a heavily pounding drumline - a good tune to get lost inside when clubbing I'd wager. And then there's 'Dominos', a dancey number with an anthemic chorus that Ian Brown'd be proud of.
'Love In Vain' slows things right down, reminiscent of The Verve circa A Storm In Heaven. It's the weakest of the early tracks but doesn't outstay its welcome. 'At War With The Sun' turns the volume and distortion back up and nicely pushes the album forward. 'Velvet' is a more considered groover but with an air of teenaged romantic disappointment about it and the guitars still get thrashed around to good effect. 'Golden Pendulum' is less than arresting song but pleasantly relaxing all the same.
'Frisk' ups the angst quotient with its yearning questions on the subject of love. It gets a bit repetitive though. The bassline on 'Tonight' is deliciously fat at times, building to a good anthemic ending. Closing proceedings out is 'Count Backwards From Ten' which unfortunately never really lives up to the potential it fleetingly displays, a bit like the album in general. Not then a bad debut by anyone's measurements but certainly not as earth shattering as may have been predicted in some quarters.
