Slow Buildings

PALE SAINTS: “Slow Buildings” (4AD)

“COME IN the Stone Roses, your time is up.” That’s the cry of Pale Saints as they unleash another guitar-driven noise monster onto a still unsuspecting public. While the Roses have been embroiled in legal battles and having hassle with different producers in a parody of the “difficult second album,” Pale Saints, and many bands like them, have knuckled down and made some damn fine music.

OK, so buildings don’t move, so they’re not slow or fast, but why should that stand in the way of a good album title? As some old hack once commented “Why let truth spoil a good story?”

The opening ‘King Fade’, a four-minute instrumental, may seem an odd choice to begin an album, but after a couple of listens its off-centre rhythms and strange musical patterns become as familiar and as vital as Alkaseltzer (even the brass section doesn’t seem out of place). It has to be played loud to be really appreciated but, like The Velvet Underground’s ‘Heroin’ and anything by P.J. Harvey, can cause serious damage if listened to while under the influence of the wacky tobaccy, and serves to set a mood for what is to follow.

Pale Saints are a mellow noise band, if such a concept exists. The guitars are loud and hazy but the melody is never lost amid a maelstrom of feedback. However, when the mood takes them they can rock with the best of them: ‘Under Your Nose’ scratching the places few bands can reach, three minutes of lyrics about paint drying and feelings dying. What else could a body ask for? ‘Always I’ is like The Breeders on top form, Colleen’s and Meriel’s vocals intertwining seamlessly, and ‘Angel (Will You Be My)’ is fast and furious pop, glorious in its singalongability.

The overwhelming highlight on Slow Buildings is the almost-eleven-minute epic that is ‘Henry’, Meriel Barham’s vocals blending effortlessly with the instruments of the other three band members. This is what all music should be like; its beautifully haunting tones creating a mood of sweetest melancholy. It’s the type of song that makes me drop whatever I’m doing and take notice. The only other band I know to create such moods in music are the now sadly-defunct Into Paradise, and they only managed it on a couple of tracks. This is possibly the best song I have heard all year.

Conversely, ‘Little Gesture’ is fuck all else, two and a half minutes of slide guitar which serves no purpose other than as an intro to the excellent ‘Song Of Solomon’. The closing ‘Suggestions’ is another epic, with more time changes than your average concerto, and is a fitting end to a great album. If Ian Brown, John Squire and Co. don’t release an amazing second LP soon they’ll relinquish their indie crown to someone like Pale Saints.

• John Walshe