By Nick Ubels (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: June 5, 2013
The steady strums of a barely-perceptible acoustic guitar fade in. Flute, bells, clean-channel electric guitar and horn motifs modulate around a hushed baritone female vocal singing a too-easy melody.
The song is “Secret Music,” our re-introduction to The Pastels after a prolonged absence. But the song’s title, and Katrina Mitchell’s whispered invitation to “sing a song quietly” asks us to throw out the usual assumptions about a band on hiatus from touring or recording, namely that taking a break from the public eye means that they have stopped making music together. Instead, it feels like we have somehow wandered away and found our way back to a party that has continued on without us. It’s disorienting, but a warm antidote to well-worn big splash reunion narrative. The Pastels would like us to believe that they have only continued shambling forward, offering a friendly hand to help pull us back in stride.
The beloved 1980s Glasgow jangle-pop outfit make their long-awaited and exquisitely subdued return with Slow Summits. It’s their first proper record since Illumination in 1997, and their first set of original material since contributing to the mostly instrumental soundtrack The Last Great Wilderness in 2003, but their influence on the early careers of the Jesus and Mary Chain, Teenage Fanclub and The Vaselines has helped the band’s stature grow exponentially since we last heard from them.
Through their long history of rotating line-ups percolating around the core duo of Stephen McRobbie and, since 1990, Katrina Mitchell, the band has embraced a range of iterations that have emphasized garage guitar and chiming guitar pop in equal turn. Now, the Pastels have settled into a quiet, laid-back pop classicism that would be almost baroque if it wasn’t so off-the-cuff and raw. The snare is decidedly off for the opening drum fill of “Check My Heart,” referencing The Kinks’ dark salvo “Wicked Annabella” before reversing direction and heading for a village green with a decidedly sunnier disposition. This sort of playfulness gives life to the album’s muted beauty.
While The Pastels have never shied away from the slow burn, consistently dwelling in mid-tempo arrangements and understated instrumentation, Slow Summits finds them more engaged with this quiet, delicately-crafted side of their music than ever before. The band manages to make subtle variations and carefully-selected instrumentation usher the song into each new passage with disregard for running times or concision, using these elongated spaces to build surprisingly hypnotic tension.
There are, of course, some moments that fall flat. The aimless mid-album instrumental “After Image” fizzles out before it can reach the “Pet Sounds” heights it strives for. Yet for every moment that doesn’t quite connect, there’s a “Night Time Made Us” or “Wrong Light” where the same techniques and intention instead coalesce into an understated beauty more appreciable for its unfolding detail.
There are some for whom the held-back, casual manner of Slow Summits may prove frustrating, but its deceptively simple melodicism and unhurried drama reward repeat listens. It is a minor triumph, lacking bold innovation, but masterfully-crafted and true to its particular intent.
