Mall Girl - Pure Love Review
Coming in at just under half an hour, Pure Love is a ambitious step up from their debut.
Post college rock, says the lead singer Bethany Forest Reichberg, when describing the album’s themes. A fusion of break up album and Bildungsroman book executed with a Midwest emo influence sounds confounded, but this is far from the actuality of the sophomore record Pure Love. Emo rock reigns supreme, on an album that takes inspiration from the Midwest rock scene of the middle noughts and comes into other territories like country, dream pop and math rock.
The band, consisting of Bethany Forseth-Reichberg, guitarist Iver Armand Tandsether and drummer Veslemøy Narvesen create harmony and noise in the same space, the vocals against the intricate guitar riffs gluing the album together. the track 'English Breakfast' almost blurts into Robert Fripp territory in terms of intricate guitar play, with a solo that.
The combination of a country sound and the chaos and melancholy that comes with emo rock is the sparking point of the album, where creativity peaks and works its best. Laments on love is a continuous theme throughout the album, the situationship explored on the track 'Super Lazy Girl', a hint of math rock paired with lyrics that are based in a fear of commitment, attachment and intense devotion through, ‘Glu Myself 2 U’, the opening track veering on the operatic, fuzzy guitars that screech and calm down in the next second, string arrangements, coming together to lament on an initial attraction.
A standout moment is within the track 'Inside Out’, the charging drums and playfulness with song structures being the perfect representation of what the group successfully achieve within each track, a subversion from traditional song structures and pairing down the loud moments with a softness and space for tension to build.
Coming in at just under half an hour, Pure Love is a ambitious step up from their debut, providing a pleasant listening experience for lovers in all shapes and sizes, the committed and non-committed, those needing to escape and those who daydream about it.