Review Summary: Pumping fists, heartfelt huddles, night drives
A circle of skydivers forms a human snow crystal five kilometres above the surface of the earth; a small group of people congregate in a bar to answer trivia, drinks in hand, trinchado to share steaming in pots on the table. Others wear crisp whites and roll lawn bowls on a pitch of pointillist green. People arrange themselves into something to belong to, and sometimes that chosen bond is beyond what we would assume of a non-familial group. In 2016, such a bond was formed between the bandmates who started Pillow Queens, born of the desire to be in a band staffed exclusively by women who shared the experience of being queer (apparently, such a band is still a relative rarity in Ireland).
Pillow Queens have followed up their pointed debut with an album that touches on more introspective themes. While they still sound festival-ready, the whole experience is a little more riverine than dirty campsite. And throughout the record, I hear the bond between these four people - the album is filled to the brim with lockstep and community. The sensation is heightened by the spectre of religion, which seems infused into many of the choruses and bridges. The band may feel somewhat at odds with Catholicism (or more to the point, it's at odds with them), but they can't seem to escape the stamp of it. When the last strains of the rollicking indie rock opener "Be by your side" finish, the harmony lingers as if the band are facing each other and voicing a prayer for their shared inner experience. It's a beautiful moment after the blood-stirring gallop of the song. The next track, the similarly driving "The Wedding Band", directly addresses how they see each other at their best and worst, and how their shared struggles and musical ambition have welded them together.
The excellent opening run of quiet anthems culminates in "Hearts & Minds", a scrappy examination of being an outsider in the music business and coming to terms with fronting a group. The band has commented that even how you move on stage has to be earned when you have no favoured frame of reference. The song swells to the refrain of "You came to worship, but the godless kind", and that mixture of secular and religious fervour is perhaps again a stirring nod to communion. Singer Pamela Connolly sounds particularly inspired, her frenzied vocal selling the mania and the self-doubt.
The band switches up the songwriting from here on, and some of the slower tracks look towards classic 50's and 60's sounds. The songs that lean into this aesthetic tend to be more of a mixed bag, representing the band's stated ambition to achieve duality (by introducing softer aspects to their sound). There are strong moments, but there always seems to be an element that is not entirely successful. For "House That Sailed Away", the verses feel a little awkward, and on "Well Kept Wife" there is a vague sense of menace in the hook that dissipates at the end of the song with the puzzlingly tame reframing of a line from poet Elizabeth Bishop's "Filling Station". Only "Historian" truly works, employing dreamlike harmonies in the verse and a more aggressive squall on the chorus delivers the mixture they're striving for. They also explore new ground with the hypnotic tension of "Delivered", one of the mid-album highlights. Still, I can't help but feel that the inclusion of a few seconds of studio laughter at the end dispels some of the impact of the vortex-like climax.
Pillow Queens do demonstrate perfect understanding of a closer with "Try Try Try", a slow burn buildup that again taps into that connectedness. It's one part warm sadness, two parts anthemic hug, with a big singalong break that drenches you like a deluge of holy water or a mud friendly cloudburst. You can't help but grin with your hair virtually matted in the audio precipitation, admiring their attempt at creating some gospel for those left out of the original ones. Pillow Queens are streamlining their sound, looking for an graceful expression of their beautiful togetherness, and they're almost there.
