Italians Do It Better co-founder Mike Simonetti recently parted ways with the Italo label to start a new one, 2MR, and focus on his Pale Blue project with singers Elizabeth Wight and Jana Hunter, which he’s described as a reaction to “modern dance music and its constant fluctuations” that “intentionally bears no obvious singles or club hits.”
The Past We Leave Behind is definitely a record for the crib rather than the club, and firmly the work of someone with an affinity for specific aesthetics: the impressionist vocals and dreamlike atmosphere of 80s bands Cocteau Twins and the Glove, and the techy Italo analog rhythms and arpeggios that give an air of faded glamour to Wight and Hunter’s detached vocals.
The sprawling title track opener is the closest Pale Blue come to attaining a kind of transcendent ecstasy. The music that follows is full of warmth and beauty but rarely moves beyond the level of nostalgic collage and occasionally descends into cliché (the Dr. Seussian spoken word on Tougher). As the title suggests, the overwhelming sense of yearning is probably intentional, but ultimately emotional potency is what plants music in the present. The Past We Leave Behind is lovingly crafted but too vague to live up to its title.
Top track: The Past We Leave Behind
