August Was Warm

As the Summer wraps itself in blankets of increasing thread counts and thickness as it becomes Autumn (the best season in case you must know) we wind down the dance of the hottest year in recorded history and head to a more sober and reflective collection of vibrations.

Pearly Drops – A Little Disaster

When the musical duo Pearly Drops, Sandra Tervonen and Juuso Malin, released their first full-length album Call For Help in 2020 they seemed dedicated to bringing the synth-pop of 80’s post-punk into a consciously experimental modern era of art. Tracks like the eerie ‘Bloom For Me’ and the playful ‘Make Water’ swirled with thumping gothic bass-lines, whirring pop-electronica and high pitched vocals that often border on robotic, it was a unique and mostly solid debut. With their recent release A Little Disaster they haven’t shifted gears as much as pressed them further, sharpening the still very 80’s grooves, while offering a more cohesive and approachable collection of songs.

We open with an instrumental worthy of early New Order with ‘Feed the Fire’ that bends in and out of woozy electronics and plucky guitar and bass with the dreamy cyberspace drowned vocals. There’s a lingering joy among the melancholy in this and many of the tracks on this album that seem to encourage you to dance but not too wildly. Tracks like ‘Kiss Away the Pearly Drops’ with its infectious chorus is perhaps the most poppy moment on the album when the synths swoop in over the meditative lyrics and the quieter ‘Take Me Down*’ swoops in with the distant strings echoing amongst the playful synths.

*I am falling, I am free

I wanna see how deep it leads

My bare body in violet flames

A new form under different name

Ooh, the flames are burnin' through my

Burnin' through my skin

More somber moments on the album come when the joyous speed of the percussion slows down and revels in the melancholy more fully, such as in songs like ‘Cry While You Sleep*’ which for all its obvious sadness still has a cheekiness even in its most devastating moments. ‘Forest Scene’ dips the energy way down with a droning guitar amidst the wall of electronic whirring and vocal blending before the percussion kicks in just before the stuttering conclusion. ‘One-Woman Boy Band’ dips more into Shoegaze and Dream-pop than the rest of the record and is a great vibe-check for the midway point of the album.

* No one can really make me shine

I pass on after a lingering life

Tick tock, ticks the clock

It's running out and it'll stop

Born again as a version I denied

Flashing light, endless night

Born again as a version I denied

Flashing light

The latter half of the album shines most with the track ‘Get Well*’ which is the sweetest and loveliest track in Pearly Drops catalogue so far. It’s lyrically violently self-effacing while the instrumental is as gentle and meditative. The direct follow-up ‘My Ashes Blow Away’ continues the upward lift mixed with a dreamy electronic soundscape swooping in like a soft wind and would be a great album closer when it devolves into the heavy thump of the crispy, electronic coda. However, we do get one last track with ‘Big Trouble’ which is a droning spoken word number where the flashes of experimentation that popped up in smaller ways earlier in the album play out in full and, depending on your mood, may be your favorite or least favorite moment on the release.

* Kick, kick my head in

Cut off my eyelids

So I could see

Take, take my roses

Overflowing

I am choking

Get well

Get well

Get well soon

A Little Disaster is a stronger, bolder, and more experimental outing than their first album. As a result, I enjoy it more as, in the moments where it could lean too much into the Synth-pop/post-punk tropes, it shines through with its own charm and unique perspective to stay fresh. While it may not be as deep as some of the other music I’ve listened to this year, they’re a group I keep coming back to for their singular blend of joyful melancholy.

Oklou – Galore Nightdrift

Back in 2020 French artist Oklou (Marylou Maynie) released the mixtape Galore, a small but stunning (and brief) collection of hypnotic and dreamy tracks that float in with a sorrow and distortion that revels in isolation and yearning. Oklou’s vocals softly cry over some Vangelis (Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire) infused synths chords in what amounts to an addictive pop record that is over far too soon. Fortunately, this wasn’t the album’s final form. Just under a year later Oklou performed a digital ‘immersive’ livestream of it on the Boiler Room (an online collective that live streams DJ sets and other live parties/club performances) YouTube channel under the title Galore Nightdrift.

From the start its clear that this stream was built more as an art piece with a greater visual scope than a standard live performance, as Oklou sits in a burnt-out field with charred trees and dusty rocks surrounding her, with grey skies and looming pillars of smoke hover in the background. There are occasional and pointed pops of light that burst through the clouds or emit from sparks of fires still raging but for a bleak as it looks, there is beauty throughout. The visuals are a perfect marriage to the autumnal tone already set in the tracks and in every way elevates them beyond what the mixtape alluded to.

Most of the tracks unfold as they were on the mixtape but, even so, here they blend with more focus and singularity than they did with that release. ‘Fall,’ ‘God’s Chariot,’ ‘Galore’ all play out in a smooth and sweet fashion, with Oklou sitting with legs crossed at her keyboard tapping out the whooshing synth chords. It isn’t really until ‘Asturias’ that we see our first large deviation from the earlier release. ‘Asturias’ was the first track I heard off the mixtape and though it was far shorter than it should have been, it still got its hooks in me. However, here it lives up to its full potential, both with the visual shift, taking our established shots of OKlou sitting on the ground for a close-up of the keyboard as Zero Castigo takes the vocal reigns from a Cell Phone screen places atop the keyboard.

This moment in the stream provides kind of the halfway marker as we visually shift into a computer-generated version of Oklou over a glitchy-chopped and screwed version of ‘Rosebud.’ Then we transition into another fantastic vocal feature with Casey MQ, one of the major collaborators on the mixtape, taking the full vocal duties for ‘Girl on Her Throne.’ His appearance seems to exist almost in a separate dimension, as he performs in a pink lit bedroom through a pin hole image with the desolation circled around him. It’s in this way that the performance supports its theme of isolation, by having the guest singers pop in from another location, alone and separated but still united with the music.

The final stretch of the performance has guitarist Florian Le Prisé join Oklou in the desolate ash under a moderately starrier sky for an extended acoustic version of ‘Another Night’ which is a gorgeous song in either version, though my preference does lean toward the one from the mixtape. The isolation is broken a little by the intimate duet of the guitars before Oklou returns to the synths with Florian plucking along with the final track (in both its parts) ‘I Didn’t Give Up on You’ and the stream comes to a soft close, with little fanfare outside of the quiet reflection you’re sure to drift to.

There’s something distinctly ‘of the moment’ (2020-2021) about the Galore Nightdrift stream. It exists in a world torn apart, where we’re separated from human connection, yet longing for it and ultimately achieving it, though maybe not in the way we expected. However, like all good art it even transcends this framework and speaks to a greater message of human loneliness, environmental uncertainty, and the connecting power of music. This is the apex version of Oklou’s Galore mixtape, and while it's not as convenient to listen to as a playlist I feel like it’s required viewing to fully understand the magic of these tracks.

August Playlist

In the same way that I tried to portray the rains of spring a few months back, this month's playlist is directed toward the heat! We’ve got some obvious choices but as always, I'm trying to go for a more unexpected collection of hot, hot, hot tracks. Of course, some of the obvious ones were just too good to leave off so, either way, I hope you enjoy!