Performance videos can go in many directions. Some are all about flash and flounce. Some are simply the band playing live, though they’re generally polished to the point where they lose everything that makes a live show special. Some are humorous. Others are simply about self-aggrandizement. What I love about the approach that No Pine Mall takes for their latest single, “Impostor Syndrome,” is that they hone in on the beauty and precision of the playing of the song. Not then a band performance, as such, nor an excuse to showboat, not even really about the band at all, not as a whole, just a spotlight on the artistry and instrumentation of making music itself.
And it is a song that lends itself to such a close-up and intimate point of view, a slow-burning, shoegazy, post-rock piece rising from a metronomic beat, washed with chiming arpeggios, basslines full of poise and pulse, a soundscape full of tension and anticipation, atmospheric yet sharp, cool (in every sense of the word) and considered.
We are presented with each instrument joining the fray, as if No Pine Mall wants to lay bare the mechanics of their song, an exploded diagram to be understood and appreciated, studied but also revelled in.
By the time the vocals join in, way past the halfway mark, the song is a blistering squall of icy sonics, hazy musical horizons, and drifting moods; the words, half hidden in the song’s billowing creativity, are as much an instrument in their own right as they are a form of communication.
Reference points, for me, are found in bands like My Bloody Valentine, Ride and early, pre-pop Lush, but also in the more post-rock positions of bands such as This Will Destroy You and God Is an Astronaut but discerning music fans of all stripes, and particularly those who favour cinematic soundscaping, will find plenty to love here.
This single is a taste of what to expect from the band’s third EP, Adrift, which drops on the 28th of November.
