Pebbledash - Four Portraits of the Same Ugly House
Cork based six-piece Pebbledash release their first official project under the banner of Four Portraits of the Same Ugly House. The EP's lead single "Tell Me" was released back in October and the band played live dates across Ireland throughout October and November. The four-track EP shows early indications of a band with major promise and potential.
EP opener "Alone and Forsaken" slowly works it's way forwards; a haunting aura drifts out of and around the track. Like water building on the outside of a glass wall, it eerily rises. Your eyes can't help but look on in despair; you can't pull them away from it either. The knowing of how it ends never failed to make it any less daunting. The dam bursts and it all resorts right back to beginning. A fresh start but none the wiser. A spiritual exercise of humility and gentle resilience.
'The grass in the valley is starting to die.'
The slow builds and the wall-of-noise releases always hit their mark on "Soak". The track heavily houses elements of Shoegaze - impenetrable slabs of distortion rise as ear-splitting feedback stabs through. The foreground is indeed closer but just as indecipherable as the distant background - it's like double-glazed, opaque windows. The story-telling that flows along the sauntering and seering sonics is one of bittersweetness. Dream-like wisps of memories come flooding back in full colour. Love and loss and the defeat felt in life taking the path that it takes. Reminiscing on what nearly was, losing the present in the process.
'I'd run to you like Autumn runs to Spring.'
"Tell Me" opens with menacing drums and a worming bassline - like a sinister drift of dust rising from sour lament. Alone in times of deep resentment - alone but not lonely. Planning. Plotting. Kept company by the suppressed side of ones self - always there; always bubbling; always manifesting the world going by your window.
'Tell me, honestly, who let you in?'
EP closer "Slowly Slowly" opens with a stab of contorted, twisted noise. A distorted twang of irked unwinding crashes out right before diving into serene seas. Refrains of 'I wish you knew me' hit home. The six degrees of separation between the person and the portrayal. The perceivable space between two people and points in time. Understood at the level of the self; still misunderstood by outside entities.
Pebbledash are among many an up-and-coming act coming out of Cork alongside The Cliffords, Crying Loser, Letterbox Kid and Pretty Happy to name just a few.
Pebbledash hit the UK for a few dates in February including the prestigious Brixton Windmill as part of Independent Venue Week, Brighton's The Hope & Ruin and Camden's Elephants Head.
