There is an awful lot to be said for seclusion, specifically when it comes to creating something that not only has more than a snowball’s chance of surviving under the glare and heat of stage lights but also displays no small level of distinctiveness.
Fact is, this debut album from Limerick’s Bleeding Heart Pigeons has more going on constructively in one song than many other bands have across a suite of tracks, so being removed – physically, creatively – from outside influences has clearly helped.
Such distance really shows in the range of sounds here. Anything You Want is a fine pop song that oozes out of earshot with a coda of delicate guitar- picking so lovely you want it to last for much longer.
In The Forest, I Feel Bizarrely More At Home is a peculiar and beguiling song (that title!) which ends with thudding, staccato rhythms that bring to mind roadside jackhammers. Vapour is full of deliriously crushing/ crunching guitars; Dancer is woozy, classic-era Human League laid out for beginners; and for over eight minutes A Hallucination transforms from slight pop tune to granite-tough sonic assault.
Lengthier tracks such as Nausea and Song With No Meaning (each arrive and depart in just under 10 minutes) allow even further experimentation with varying results.
The former suffers somewhat from guitar-noodling histrionics – self-indulgent as much as self-expressive – that wouldn’t be out of place on a Mahavishnu Orchestra album, while the latter consists of six minutes of dreamy followed by three minutes of eerie.
Despite the apparent flaws in these two songs, it’s immensely rewarding to listen to a band that has virtually no compulsion to stoop to formulaic song configurations. It all adds up to a bunch of musicians that can easily manage to tie varying strands together without getting a hair out of place.
