Jonah Hoy has had a good look at Four Portraits Of The Same Ugly House - the debut EP from Cork-based shoegaze/noise rock six piece Pebbledash. Here's his review.
Four Portraits of the Same Ugly House, released on January 31st, is a gospel of the melancholy. It holds such a weight and drab to it, that if you tried to strain it, it would be a thick mucus like texture. Taking absolutely hours and hours for one drop to even plop out.
Pebbledash have a haunting feel, and Slowly, Slowly encompasses that perfectly. With a bittersweet melody that isn't crass but feels as if you are being plucked into the vortex. Remember in old cartoons when someone would try to be hypnotised or sent into another dimension? The verse feels like you are swirling in a black white spiral being taken to an empty, empty place.
That hollow and empty feeling forces you to sit and reflect. Pebbledash, openly discuss release and desire, going back and forth between the two. Figuring out if it's ok to be selfish or if it isn't? And coming to the conclusion that it's a little of both and trying to find the balance between the two. There's despair in seeking these truths out, before being funnelled through a chorus that's so powerful it feels like you're being hung off the edge of a cliff and someone has to pull you up to safety. That gruelling, slow climb of noise rock and shoegaze that haunts the body from head to toe.
Each song reminds me of the dark; it feels like it was recorded in something run down with nature reclaiming the space. It feels cold but nostalgic in a way that doesn't make you sad but long for a connection you once had.
Each song reminds me of the dark; it feels like it was recorded in something run down with nature reclaiming the space. Where the mic stands and the drum kit would have been properly placed so as not to disturb the roots of what's growing through it. It feels cold but nostalgic in a way that doesn't make you sad but long for a connection you once had.
Four Portraits of the Same Ugly House is Pebbledash's take on the 90s alt scene. You can hear the sprinkle of Smashing Pumpkins' sloppy, distorted choruses and angelic verses mixed with a hollow atmosphere, that Deftones had made their staple. The 90s were a time of great hope because of the explosion of the Internet and the coming of the 21st century. The music reflects that even in all its grievances, it still had a wide eyed look into the new millennium. With their sound, I feel Pebbledash have a more accurate take on what was to come in the 21st century.
The cover of Carraig Aonair is one of two bonus songs only on the physical copies and it's one of the most haunting and sweet tunes. A shoegaze take on traditional, Irish folk, that only heightens the story of a father's lament of his children shipwrecked and doomed by the deceitful calm.
Four Portraits of the Same Ugly House reminds me of harsh winters where your father had to go to work and made you shovel the snow from your grandma's sidewalk because you were home from school. With no cars in sight, walking through the slush in a white wasteland, pretending that time had stopped or time traveled to an unrecognisable place.
A post apocalyptic world where everything but the buildings disappeared the second you stepped out the door. After finishing the shovelling, you sit in your grandma's old house and a peaceful feeling of pretending falls over you. The songs feel like what you would have listened to as the snow fell, looking through the big window in her kitchen. That big empty house, watching, surrounded by books and bricks older than your grandparents.
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