Review Summary: "Little old ladies die afraid and alone"
It is not horribly infrequent that an album I may have otherwise completely passed over surprises me. What is a great degree more infrequent is when an album surprises me with an allure composed of a great number of facets I find disdainful the majority of the time.
That last statement, I hope is apparent, is said without any sort of critical malice. On the contrary, this album left me feeling wider open to concepts in music I previously would not have. When I describe new music to a friend, I have a tendency to use the archetypal tactic of "It's like (band x) meets (band y)." While I recognize this to be a very null assessment to use in a review, I cannot help myself from utilizing it in this circumstance. The melodramatic, almost contradictory lackluster droll of the vocalist continuously draws out fond memories of classic Depeche Mode, while the light upbeat melodies force to light the guilty pleasure that I hold in Passion Pit.
Pacifica though, is not an album strictly derivative of these 'staples'. The personality it puts forth is very original for current music. Lyrical criteria leaves a somber tone as lines echo off into following stanzas, giving it an endearing contrast between upbeat and morose.
With opening tracks "Youth In Trouble" and "Ghosts" leaving a clear impression of worry and regret respectively (though in the case of Ghosts, a sort of fantastical empowering regret - if that can resonate with anyone else at all in a comprehensible way), The Presets show that while the composition of their songs may not have a great deal of dynamic, the collection of songs and the deliberate way they are ordered shows that they are a fairly versatile duo. Being said, this album gradually seems to transition feelings it intends to evoke. By the time you get to "Fall" you wouldn't be surprised if you had heard this music before at a club before and not given it much mind at that moment. The whole album feels like there are tracks that would merit a spot on the U.S top 40, if not already hold one.
Albeit the exception the track "A.O", the remainder of the album seems to falter out from an upper and downer fistfight of a dance party, though not falter in the sense that it dwindles, but rather closes itself as an album that knows how to be closed. "A.O" though, is an incredibly enticing track. It's feeling is a lot more resounding than the more dance-able tracks, akin to the first two, though hell if I can dictate what it is supposed to be telling me.
And that's whole this whole album feels to me. It's incredibly interested, it's feel dark and edgy, I could see a teenage version of myself thinking some of the more baritone vocal heavy tracks were the absolute ***. At the same time, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to dance to it, or sift through it's lines for some sort of powerful hidden motif. All I know for now, is that I really dig it, and this is a group that is worth keeping on your radar.
