On 7 June 2021 I wrote the following on this blog
"Today it's time to pay some attention to a small album, not only in the number of songs and length, but in the sense that this is a modest album. An album that does almost nothing else but present nice, small songs. Songs that are a mix between conventional sounds and electronic ones, while the singing is always electronically treated, at times even towards Smurf levels."
Today it is 8 September 2025 and Pickle Darling released its fourth album last Friday and it is totally appropriate to repeat the words I started my review of 'Cosmonaut' with.Lukas Mayo, who is Pickle Darling, with Bots presents an album that is both alienating as personally endearing. It is so easy to immerse in the music that can feel distant because of the electronics and close because of the warmth coming with all songs. Seldom have I been bounced between these two extremes so distinctly while at all times liking the album as individual songs and as a whole.
In recent reviews I have likened Pickle Darling to the Dutch act Moon Moon Moon and Jake Nicoll's recent album 'Saturn Returns (see below). Both work from the same starting point. Music created on a laptop with a millions digital options and sounds within the click of a finger. But without being able to write great melodies with these options and the skills to record guitars, piano's, old Casio's or whatever as well. Mayo mentioned that the laptop nearly crashed from the sheer digital weight of all the ideas for songs and the layers of sounds stacked on top of one another. Luckily enough was salvaged to release Bots. The world would have been a lot poorer without this album.
How modest Pickle Darling is, shows the opening song, 'Obsession'. We hear a voice memo of songwriter Ava Mirzadegan first over atmospherics, a child's piano sound, synths and a strummed acoustic. When Mayo starts singing it is like a second song just started. It isn't. 'Obsession' at 3 minutes 27 takes a different turn.
Pickle Darling moves somewhere between total naiveté and a mature grown up. The album is one of total beauty, no matter how the electronics and atmospherics can be distracting or even alienating. The total is of a level that Sparklehorse reached only on its debut album with the impossible name 'Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot'.
During my vacation Jake Nicoll released a new album and I see no way to catch up on it with all the releases awaiting the world in the coming days and weeks, so allow me to add a few words here.
Nicoll debuted on this blog in 2024 with the album 'Lonely Mission'. It is a singer-songwriter album of a quality, that it still gets regular spins in this home. Returning from vacation there was a cd in the mail and of course I gave it a listen as soon as things were settled in once again. My surprise was rather big. Listening to 'Try To Believe Me', opening the album, I was hearing a mix of Pet Shop Boys and Tubeway Army. Combining 'West End Girls' with 'Are Friends Electric', without reaching the deepness in sound of the latter.
The sound of Saturn Returns has the feel of a laptop album created in the bedroom in dark hours of the night. In that it has a resemblance to Pickle Darling and Moon Moon Moon. The total outcome is different, as Saturn Returns is a far more electronic album, with electronic beats and all. In that sense Saturn Returns stands apart from the other two.
What remains is that Nicoll is a fine songwriter. I would never put on an album by Pet Shop Boys and haven't played a Tubeway Army album since the early 1980s, I think. That single, of course I have. I will play this album again and wanted to give it some attention as it deserves it.
Two albums by the same artist can hardly be any different but if the quality of songwriting remains, it is about the will to bend the ears to another sound. I'm glad to have done so.
Wout de Natris - van der Borght
No comments:
Post a Comment