Pixie Carnation seems both optimistic and jaded; double entendres float through most of their songs. They could be singing about the end of a relationship, the end of the world or just another day in paradise.
[Purchase] Pixie Carnation’s new album The New World Record may not be typical fair for Igloo readers; upon first listening, I was taken aback. This was not what I was expecting. The first track, “When Did the Lights Go Out?” begins symphonically, not unheard of in electronic music, but then… Guitars? Verse, chorus, verse? A singer who sounds like he grew up in rural Georgia and moved to Atlanta or Memphis the minute he turned eighteen? Wait, wait, wait, I thought these guys were from Sweden!
While their influences are clearly set in classic rock and roll, and they play guitars, drums, piano and keyboards instead of synthesizers, drum machines and laptops, I would highly recommend Pixie Carnation to any Igloo reader. They may fit better under indy rock than any electronic genre, but everything about PC is experimental and steeped in double and triple entendres.
Simultaneously reminiscent of Wilco, Neutral Milk Hotel and Sonic Youth, their instrumentals are all upbeat, swelling, thrumming and celebratory. I dare your toe to stop tapping to Jacob Lind’s bass and Kristoffer Rudberg’s drums give it a driving, dancing backbone. And Tobias Hellkvist’s guitars, matched with Niklas Larsson’s piano and keyboard riffs, will have you nodding your head and smiling.
Juxtapose music that makes you want to skip and bounce around your bedroom with Ola Pålsson’s vocals trying to tear out your heart out of your chest, and you have Pixie Carnation. Even PC’s lyrics, though, don’t just evoke one simple emotion. PC isn’t content just breaking your heart. These guys want just a bit more from you. PC seems both optimistic and jaded; double entendres float through most of their songs. They could be singing about the end of a relationship, the end of the world or just another day in paradise.
“I was gonna stand on the rooftop / I was gonna shout out your name / I was gonna slow down your feelings / I was gonna speed up your heart,” PC seem simultaneously optimistic and jaded. They capture that first heartbreak, that first taste of mortality; that moment we’ve all had, when we realize we can’t fix the whole world, and we won’t be with our First Love forever. Somehow PC captures that moment and, simultaneously, a feeling of youthful denial. Sure, we know we won’t live forever. Sure, we know we can’t change the whole world, but this big, bad, dark world is still our oyster somehow. We still have a million years to live. Even the idea of “getting old” is still a million miles away.
This is a record for a new world. It’s a new world record. It’s something entirely new made up entirely of old parts. Give it a listen or ten.
The New World Record is out now on Tapete. [Purchase]
