WL//WH Review Pam Risouriè
The Paris-based multifaceted Shoegaze collective Pam Risourié discloses their long-anticipated second studio album, “I’ll Never Be Human,” via Shoredive Records (UK) and Stellar Frequencies (FR), with Atypeek Music at the distribution helm, the follow-up to the acclaimed 2023 debut full-length, “Days of Distortion.”
The French five-piece have painstakingly crafted an equally refulgent and shadowy sonic thread of three-guitar-laden shoegaze that seamlessly converges into dream pop, post-rock and slowcore suggestions, imbued with enough aural distinction and melodic flair to make it entirely their own, regardless of hints to Sonic Youth, Low, Duster, Yo La Tengo, Slowdive/Mojave 3 and My Bloody Valentine.
Deeply layered, immersive and intimate, “I’ll Never Be Human” is an extremely sad, introspective work laced with silver linings and hope. All songs come with atmospheric backups that provide support, understanding, and fill in lonely spaces.
Mostly, the lyrics explore the toxic effects of trying to fit into another’s worldview that doesn’t match your own through a lens of losing the self and the other.
The album, a journey of freedom through honest, at times devastating, exploration of self and others, strikes at the heartstrings from its inception. The emotive, stirring crescendo of the title track, “I’ll Never Be Human”, an ode to schemes that ultimately lead to death, builds on the juxtaposition of regretful, melancholic vocals, washed in hazy distorted guitar textures, with repetitive energetic strummed stabs, and high-pitched aching rainfalls of excruciating leads, toward a transient sky of drifting, unfulfilled dreams.
The urgent billowing “Immer” and the subsequent seething heart-rending “Moth” deal with submitting to and, in the latter, breaking free from another’s control, display the band’s prowess for blending a stirring, sheer, ecstatic—yet viscerally pained—melancholy with shimmering blankets of strained, slightly abrasive, and bleeding effect-laden guitars, through a haunting push-and-pull of tension and release, weightlessness and density, hope and despair, to move and mesmerize the listeners within a spectral, transcendental, heady vortex of the senses.
The drifting, waiting for it all to end, despair of “Sunds” and the dulcet, wistful contemplation of the folk-tinged “Reborn” depict reflective, drawn-out, spellbinding electro-acoustic landscapes built on gentle, airy sad melodies and downtrodden open-hearted intimacy; whilst swaying, lulling midtempo rhythms and the pulsing tinkling, self-searching atmospherics of “Who am they, who are I?” carry the heavily emotional choral moods of an aching vocal delivery.
Probably one of the most immaculate shimmering pop moments, despite its 9-minute length, “Quicksand” unravels an entrancing bittersweet nostalgia to scratch at the surface, cast by crystalline, reverberating plucked chords that punctuate velvety, fearful vocals, finally bouncing over the ether into a spiral of subtly strident tones, struggling through the shadows of the mind with steadfast comfort.
The heartwarming, sentimental strain and the vibrato sidereal 6-string notes of “You are the drug and the rain” close things down, with an earnest, cocooning embrace to accept the truth under the illusion, like the burning rays of a sunrise during a cathartic rainfall.
Blurring the lines amid the tangible and the intangible, “I’ll Never Be Human”, produced in Stockholm with Rhys Edwards (of Ulrika Spacek), strikes a fine balance between melodic sensitivity, instrumental intricacy and raw emotive depth that feels both inspirational, thought-provoking, and brutally honest.
Pam Risourié‘s sophomore studio album, “I’ll Never Be Human,” is out now (CD/Vinyl 12″ & Digital) via Shoredive Records (UK) and Stellar Frequencies (FR), with Atypeek Music handling the distribution duty.This evening the band will celebrate the album release with a live party at Montreuil‘s Le Chinois, joined by the stellar Crushing Swans (nu-gaze, Germany) and Neon Bay (grunge goth, Paris).
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