Picastro
Metal Cares

“One of the most emaciated parts of the recent history of the icy, rocky, north-American sound (as oblique and ghostly as it may be, rock it still is)”.

This could, thus, briefly and easily describe what is aurally slapped by the magnificently melancholy and melancholic (forgive me the oblique pseudo-oxymoron) Picastro. A distressed work, as tormented as it is fearless and fascinating, composed of a “sound-lamentation”, austere as well as solid, created by four increasingly young Canadians sprouts and noticeably for this (though trivial) reason even more pregnant and sated with significant motives of aural interest. A dark as well as shadowy humus, only sporadically granting some sparse sound-millimeter of graceful listening, imbued as it is to the marrow with a palpable and ancestral psychic sub-ference [highly (un)advised for those wishing to avoid potential overwhelming depressive crises or, in the worst case, gripped by a desire to dissolve], unwinding among the (more than inter)personal, whispered faint-tones of the often melodious vocalist, violinist, and piano glockenspiel-ist Miss Liz Hysen, grated acoustic guitar arpeggios often monochromatic and desert-like rather: remarkable, in this sense, the (pseudo)tex mex climax present in the tense and as well beautiful “Sharks”, a track for which Calexico would sign numerous and lifelong blank promissory notes... and pachyderm and dyslexic rhythmic/percussive; all of it colored (so to speak) by thick blankets of leaden assorted cello skillfully dispensed to assign a considerable additional sound-intrusion value and put as a definitive seal of further saddening chiseling and briny mood, suitable to extinguish the rare glimmers of faint audio-light emerging: if I had to find a comparable cinematic counterpart, without hesitation I would indicate the crepuscular and ultra-introspective "Felicia's Journey" by (as coincidence would have it) Egyptian/Canadian director Atom Egoyan. The tormented ejected at fleshless notes (the ruinously apocalyptic “Skinnies” or again the ultra-intimate “I Can’t Fall asleep” truly satisfy and even more for the enveloping and solid grey-tone sonority) though being soberly personal and not easily comparable (for the babbler here writing, to avoid misconceived misconceptions), recalls, to cite expressive domains not exactly similar but with “saddening” final results, the equally audio-ranting (and magnificent) “Black Black” work of Chokebore-ian memory.

Sporadically the level of acoustic self-pity reaches peaks (or abysses, Your Call) nearly exacerbating and similarly gratuitous (as proof: the implacably forced/off-key beginning of the contorted “Dramaman” or the ultra-suffering lullabies creating “Ah Nyeh Nyeh”): fortunately (for Them, but especially for the astonished and “amused” listeners) these are sparse forceful fragments immersed in a thorny, introspective and notable sound-intrigue; testimony as intimate (three of the tracks are captured homemade) and hard as it is cerebrally stimulating: you determine the quantum.