There were shimmering moments on 2009’s excellent A Brief History Of Love wherein the Big Pink appeared poised to sneak the adventurous, clever early-’80s synthpop of the New Romantics back into relevance beneath a cloak of Phil Spector (by way of Jesus And Mary Chain) noise. The vision, alas, remained a bit murky, lost in Psychocandy-lite squalls, never quite cohering into a fully realized whole. On the band’s beguiling sophomore effort Future This (4AD), however, the Brit electro-gaze duo lives up to its considerable promise with 10 sleek tour-de-force anthems: Imagine a Y-chromosome-fronted Britpop version of Tegan And Sara or maybe a grittier, wised-up a-ha backed by a supergroup comprised of Kevin Shields, Bernard Sumner and Jam Master Jay, and you’ll be in the right neighborhood. “Lose Your Mind” could be a Simple Minds b-side circa “Sanctify Yourself.” In short, a fantastic, uplifting listening experience. The Big Pink’s Milo Cordell and Robbie Furze will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with Cordell.
Furze: This, the Way Huge Swollen Pickle, has the biggest and the warmest distortion I have ever come across. It isn’t my main distortion pedal, and sometimes it doesn’t appear on my board and for some reason it doesn’t cut though live that well or work that well in a change of other pedals. The Big Pink use it in the studio every time we record guitars. It creates a massive bed and you can layer and layer to make walls of sonic distortion. The Pumpkins used it a lot on Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie. Like the drop in “Mayonaise.” The only time I use it live is when I use split rigs on bigger tours. I set up a splitter pedal and have a second rig just with the Swollen Pickle on it to hit in on chorus or whatever needs a massive wall of power. Some people will argue the Big Muff is bigger than the Swollen Pickle, but in my opinion, they know nothing.
Video after the jump.
