3 out of 5

Label: Murailles Music

Produced by: ?

As a member of Papier Tigre, Eric Pasquereau employs his emo-tinged vocals to an impressive blend of Discord 00s punk and post-rock song structures, flexing across a range of intensity that can cover both folksy indie strums and chugging hardcore riffs.

The Patriotic Sunday can be read sort of as Pasquereau’s solo project, which pitches the above formula toward the folksy side of the equation. The range now is more in mood than in how the music is expressed, and the range is also somewhat narrowed. This, is anything is what holds All I Can’t Forget back: Pasquereau sounds rather restrained throughout, and the crisp recording and scattershot instrumentation results in much of the music feeling / sounding somewhat superficial, even if at that same surface level, these are good melodies, with a lot of interesting additions.

The starting point here are the core guitar riffs, and Pasquereau’s singing: the former is very wishy-washy, and does not deliver many notable melodies; the latter finds the singer rather muted, which puts him on a similar midrange as the guitar. Tracks will build on top of this base, which is smart, but it means you go in without an initial hook, and many song ideas are short-lived, making it hard to build steam. But: given patience, almost every track delivers some impressive moments or conclusion, and there are some fantastic tunes which fully juxtapose a layer of building intensity with this more tempered framework.

The Patriotic Sunday wanders through the acoustic, folksy pop of Pseudosix, Timbre Timber, and The Shins, and dusts it with Pasquereau’s appreciation for angular no-wave stylings. Select moments prove this to be a unique blend, but it’s a success that’s often fleeting, leaving the remainder to be pretty, but not necessarily noteworthy.