3 out of 5

Label: Solid Brass

Produced by: Pleasure Forever

The swinging guitars; the glamorously moody piano; the pounding drums; Andrew Rothbard’s I-am-displeased vocals… this is undoubtedly Pleasure Forever on 2023’s mini-album Distal, twenty years after we would have last heard them on Altar. But this is also not that Pleasure Forever, as we can feel the pause having been used to chill on the hedonist gloom and glam shtick and, perhaps, better utilize all of the group’s influences. This produces something maybe not as instantly memorable, but also more mesmerizing: a very distinct sound that opens up PF’s hard-edged style to broader psychedelic and krautrock affectations. ‘Distal’ is a good title, though: there’s still a distance here, maybe, arguably, the group getting their bearings, somewhat witnessed through the mini-album’s structure of attention-grabbing bookends and more swaggering, hazy, almost drone-like washes in its middle. The production and balance of clean and distorted elements is absolutely delightful: the piano keys clink so cleanly, and the drums are pumped in the mix in a way that balances oddly and wonderfully against Rothbard’s smoothed out (and fuzzed up) singing and a softened guitar sound. It’s that discomfiting mismatch of pop and noise of classic Pleasure Forever, wiser and more patient with age. Again, I can’t say this makes it instantly memorable: the lyrics are generally pretty open-ended in expressing disaffection with the world, and there’s a sense that the singing is intended as just another musical layer, and not necessarily intended to make you hang on the words; tracks begin with strong musical concepts and then hammer on them, confidently and casually, for several minutes.

This sounds negative but it’s more that it’s not “eventful:” it’s not a group returning with a boastful new sound a couple decades later, instead just showing up on stage like they’ve been playing this whole time. Yeah, they can rock the eff out still, and they also can not do that. To quote a gleefully detached line: “But man, I digress.”