Heave Media

The Big Pink Spaces Out

Atmospheric debut from London duo has its highs and lows.

The Big Pink

A Brief History of Love

Released on Jul 16, 2009

Let me start by saying that I’m generally not much for etherealness in my music. Your Animal Collectives and Sigur Roses of the world just don’t tend to hit me on whatever level of consciousness people register music on. I tend to like my music melodic rather than dissonant, the instrumentation up-front and relatively straightforward, preferably with lots of riffy guitar. 

So you can imagine the skepticism with which I approached the spacey, atmospheric rock dished out in spoonfuls on The Big Pink’s A Brief History of Love. At first glance the album seems to be everything I don’t like about modern rock music: over-serious, over-produced, and delivered without any sense of enjoyment, happiness, or humor. And it most certainly is a strangely mixed album, often burying the hazy-but-melodic vocal lines beneath layers of synth fuzz and dissonance. Suffice it to say that The Big Pink and I got off to a bit of a rocky start. 

Somewhere around my third spin of “Dominoes”, however, something changed. The heavy-handed mixing, which initially struck me as a “Let’s do this just because we can!” sort of thing, seemed more purposeful, manipulating the song’s feel and tone in order to create a broader, more choral sounding atmosphere. It succeeded in grabbing my attention, and got me listening to the album with renewed interest. 

This is not to suggest that the A Brief History of Love has completely won me over, as there are more than a few points on the album – opener “Too Young to Love” and “She’s No Sense” for example – where the atmospherics become a bit too oppressive. Both songs have either too much or too little going on in any given moment for my tastes, and the spacey vibe does each of them a disservice. Given the positive recognition The Big Pink have received from outlets like Pitchfork and NME, however (even winning the latter’s Philip Hall Radar Award for Best New Act), I’m certainly willing to concede that I’m just not smart enough to entirely grasp what’s going on in these particular moments. 

What I do know is that I hear in songs like “Dominoes”, “Velvet”, and “Stop the World” the kind of head-bobbing pop songwriting and hummable melodic lines that represent exactly what I love about music. And while these remain heavily atmospheric and production-heavy pieces, they manage to balance successfully that atmospheric quality with an accessible musicality that provides entry points for the album’s more difficult material (as opposed to songs like “Introduction to Awareness” which seems dissonant simply for dissonance’s sake and designed to drive away all but the most dedicated listener). 

Ultimately, A Brief History of Love probably isn’t making its way into my regular listening rotation anytime soon, but it is a relatively exoteric, easily digestible atmospheric rock record -- something there is far too little of in its particular corner of the music universe. The memorable moments make The Big Pink’s debut full length worth exploring, while its lesser parts are usually easily skippable tracks. All in all, I’d call A Brief History of Love a solid debut – just not really my thing.

Posted by David Sitrick on Jul 16, 2009 @ 6:00 am