The story of the band Pacifica- the music duo, not the city in California, or the mean girl from
Gravity Falls- is all about the global reach of New York City, but actually, but really, to get what's going on here, you have to make a layover in the UK. Pacifica, an Argentine band that sings primarily in English, has the kind of vibe that drives rock fans on the island downright mental- cool, detached, hook-heavy, glossy and polished, with cut-edit ready grooves seemingly tailored for high-end perfume ads as much as montages of modish youth raving in a warehouse basement. With a little Arctic Monkeys' DNA percolating up from the group's evolutionary past and a general adherence to the playful pop-bite that dragged groups like The Kooks into the center spotlight for a brief moment in the '00s, paired with promo images of the duo running around urban byways in brightly coloured tracksuits and indie-sleaze-inspired dress-down formal wear, it's enough to get them plastered all over what remains of the rainy island's music press and compel tender but insular youth to track down every bit of biographical info there is to be found on the duo, down to scans of their dental records (it probably doesn't hurt that lead vocalist Inés embodies a spit-take-inducing image of a young Mick Jagger on the original cover of their LP... likely one of the reasons they've swapped it on Bandcamp and elsewhere). They're sort of what limeys wish us yanks were like, rather than the harsh reality of slovenly decline and blind obstinacy that actually defines our national character. From the prickly, playful gnaw and sugar-coated strokes of melodic rebound and skating roll of "What You Doing," to the high-heel-clacking club beat and post-punk zoot-up of "Indie Boyz," to the fog-clearing, reflective ambiance cohering in a condensation of revelation and rebuke on the title track,
In Your Face! is the cross-cultural pop phenomenon that you can more or less take anywhere and enjoy anytime- the type of simulated global sweep that networks the world through sound and transcends the strife that actually stains the quotidian of the teeming masses who congregate in every corner of the globe. If the US is going to have a de facto ambassador to the old world and beyond, I can think of worse candidates than these two ladies, content to skip their way across the pond, panhandle, and plateau, and proliferate a generally positive resonance throughout the world as representatives of the best that the Americas have to offer, as opposed to what the country typically displays as its cultural and societal output, which, when not exported in the form of literal and unilateral annihilation, has become akin to so much discarded plastic dumped directly into the ocean. If folks in the UK and elsewhere come to view stylish, smart, and sincere actors like Pacifica as the worthy inheritors of the aspirations of the cross-continental, Atlantic seaboard on this half of our blue pearl, I'm happy to deputize them as such. There are certainly worse types of Americans you could have in your face than Pacifica.
