Portrait by Carla Pretzsch
Since 2021, Pale Lace is the solo atmospheric Shoegaze/Dream Pop project of the Berlin-based musician Leonie Wachter.
While the German songwriter has played only a few select shows to date, she has appeared several times as a support for Nils Keppel.
She recently dropped her second endeavor, the EP “Teenage Melancholia”, five songs written over a period of two years, including a couple of already released singles paired with music videos.
Pale Lace crafts brooding, languid, dimly lit aural tapestries filtered through a charming glaze of reverb, built on rarefied ghostly atmospheres, and introspective lyrical threads, steeped in existential malaise and hushed dread, along with ephemeral heart-rending melodies that meander throughout to emphasize mood and emotional depth, in place of bodily density, momentum and noise.
A slow flow of delicate frailty envelops the listener as they immerse themselves in a sparse, plodding yet viscerally intense and gloomy aura that thrives in subtraction and restraint, seeking earnest intimacy with a surreal, deceptive sense of spaciousness and fluidity, while simmering inward with shattered innocence and secretive trauma.
Sparse, stark drum patterns, repetitive to the point of hypnosis, moody yet rounded sonorous bass pulses, slightly distorted shimmering guitar textures that breathe and sigh like elusive presences, gauzy keys and tepid strumming set a subtly droning and plaintive uncanny backdrop striated by deeply pained shivers from lush, dreamy, sad vocals of a fragile, bored, depressive quality, hopelessly groveling and achingly soaring to reflect on loss, abandonment, seeking validation, longing for dark nostalgia, and angelic comfort.
Five immersive heartfelt songs streaked with glimmers of Mazzy Star, Beach House, Low and Slowdive, to savor carefully like a single intimate, emotive flow winding between sorrow and solace, which seamlessly coalesces into a both unsettling and mesmerizing whole.
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Portrait by Carla Pretzsch
