Your Holiday Sweater
The official unofficial Pas/Cal fan site
PAS/CAL review from Chile's Super 45
13 February 05 ¦ Permalink ¦ Comment
Pas/Cal
Oh honey, we’re ridiculous (Le Grand Magistery)
By Carmen Duarte
Translated by Fco C.
In the actual pop scene, it seems that there are two well determined factions. By a side, a bouquet of bands that consider that we are into a late-60’s and earlier-70’s revival, Chamber pot haircuts, honey-like guitars and pah-pah-pah chorus replied to the madness. Rooney and The Thrills are the more visible faces of this californiafilia. By other side, another important groups of bands like The New Pornographers, The Shins or even the actual Belle & Sebastian have perverted the chamber pop codes and have taken orchestrations and harmony to admirable (?) creativity levels. Having a compatibility such at talent levels as irony, these two groups coexist in separates extremes of pop’s spectrum. Strangely, there is one band who stay in the middle point and clearly this position doesn’t give points to their favor as result of their conciliated anxiety.
With you, Pas/Cal, the center postures hybrid.
There is nothing displeassureble in Oh Honey, We’re Ridiculous, EP that comes to continue the path of their successful debut The Handbag Memoirs (Le Grand Magistery, 2003). Five pop songs perfectly assembled, a lot of vocal harmonies, stories that want to be ingenious, a cover with a band of seventies characters at use and the simpleness of a EP format to obtain a rapid effect. The problem of so much torrid happiness is that it sounds to trying too hard. In what in other bands it seems like the search of new expressions, here it resembles to a acquired-with-obstination technic. Everything in Pas/Cal says that they’re trying to do it fine, perfectly fine. The self-defeating of it is that leave in the way originality, what in a ultra-quoted digital format can be fatal. Only this can make to conclude to who listen this EP that there are yet too much bands like Pas/Cal and that it’s becoming to be hard to notice the differences.
Now well, there is not all lost. This is a Detroit band that is not re-inventing the wheel and nobody is asking for it. Simply they sound as a dozen of other bands do. Waiting that their next album rep-levy themselves, this EP will left to the terrace tea’s soundtrack.
Click here to view the original review, without translation.
Many thanks to my friend Fco for finding this and taking the time to translate it for us.
* * *
Summer reviews
11 November 04 ¦ Permalink ¦ Comment
I received these links from anonymous yesterday and wanted to put them up.
”...some folks saw Pas/Cal at the Rock City Festival this summer and lived to tell the tale”:
Thank you anonymous person!
* * *
Press
17 September 04 ¦ Permalink ¦ Comment
- 2002’s The Handbag Memoirs and their latest Oh Honey, We’re Ridiculous have been a successful proving ground for the band’s particular brand of indie-pop. Chock-full of lyrical wit and screwy song structures, PAS/CAL are on a mission to put intelligence back into an increasingly dumbed downed pop scene…
Words by Marcus Kagler, Under The Radar, Summer 2004 issue. To read more, you can purchase the issue here.
- Interview with Casimer at LostAtSea.Online.
- While many indie poppers stroll down the dead ends of traditionalism, aiming to either soothe the bruised souls of bedsit lonelyhearts or put the skip in your step with unabashed summery hooks, PAS/CAL manages to do a bit of both with panache and intelligence to spare…
Pitchfork Media Read more here, 3/4/04
- Friends of the Heroes review – Oh Honey, We’re Ridiculous
- Artist of the Week feature – The Detroit News, 7/18/03
- Pop Matters Music Review review – The Handbag Memoirs, 3/6/03
* * *