The Big Pink Velvet (4AD)
4/5
By: Liane Escorza
When knowing I’m about to hear a Big Pink song, I’m inclined to expect brilliance. But let’s start with the details. ‘Velvet’ might be full of digital noise, but it’s also so… velvety - it has a creamy, soulful quality, like swells of foam crashing onto white-sanded beaches. Robbie Furze’s voice is crystalline amongst clouds of intense layers of keyboards. His dark and depressive undertone changes character during the bridge, in which its timbre is lighter and more dazzling, its force elongated and propelled into a blistering but controlled climax.
But, hang on, there is side B, a cover version (get this!) of Otis Redding’s ‘These Arms of Mine’. Kudos to them for daring to re-imagine a song such as this, and for the fact that the result is a spellbinding meditative chant, an interlude of vocals dancing in solitude over powerful delayed guitars. Controlled intensity, that seems to be The Big Pink’s motto.
Artists in this article: The Big Pink
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