Saturday, May 24, 2025

Album Review: Pink Must - Pink Must

I think the guitar line from the opening track "Morphe Sun" off Pink Must's self-titled LP rearranged my DNA somehow. I've always enjoyed tight, reedy riffs that follow a bendy melody, but this particular set of chords carved me up like CRISPR etching a new flavor into an otherwise bland strain of peaches. It made me feel very pliable and ready for what came next. That's the thing about Pink Must; there is a delicious softness that draws a reciprocal, sympathetic squishiness from the listener. You can feel them molding to your mood, as you, in turn, are shaped by their complementing presence. I think this has a lot to do with the way that they bridge musical forms while embellishing the natural fondament of the combined forms they've elected to experiment with. They have a penchant for baroque string arrangements that cut into and congeal with playfully pocket-sized triphop beats, often with a crunch layer of bubblegum-pop chord-crackle spread between. In addition, the languid melodicism and eletocnic enhancment of the vocals has this elastic longitude to it, where it feels very close and determinately distant at the same interval, causing you to always feel like you are traveling with the music, being carried by its movement and passage to destinations both anticipated and unknow, like your a lucky, dog-eared Pokémon card in the singer's back pocket. It's the gentlist headtrip this side of a warm bowl of kava root. I don't see Pink Must's LP as just suggested listening in 2025; it's a (Pink) must hear! 

Down but not out (15 Love).