Review: The Pink Noise – Alpha
The Pink Noise – Alpha (2009) [Almost Ready] // Grade: A
Of every band that gets slapped with the term “Noise-Pop”, Montreal’s Pink Noise are the ones who most exemplify it. After a string of moody, off-kilter 7″, cassettes and last years debut LP, the band returns with an album whose small tweak towards structure leads to some very big and interesting results.
Alpha runs it’s 25 minutes like a drug addled time warp hell bent on uniting the long distance love affair between the 70′s No Wave scene on the east and the west’s Synth-Punk. While it’s sticks to a mostly unrefined and visceral milieu that channels everything from Arto Lindsay & James Chance to the Screamers the album has a softer, more accessible undercurrent… that whole “Pop” side of Noise-Pop. From it’s rhythmic song structure to even the lyrics, there are plenty of nods and turns on Alpha that bring to mind The Cars & The Modern Lovers… in a bizarre and atonal sort of way, but there nonetheless.
While mining this dynamic is nothing new, The Pink Noise do the impossible by transcending what is usually just a novel attempt into a full blown earnest success.
