Pill Soft Hell Vinyl LP New 2018

1. Softer Side
2. Dark Glass
3. Fruit
4. HAHA
5. Sin Compromiso
6. Soft Hell

Soft Hell, Pill's second full-length album, is a raucous, splintering dispatch from New York City, animated by the madcap ingenuity of a foursome finding a palpable sense of joy and play in expressions of caustic, black humour. Like the contradiction of the album title, which references our acceptance of everyday miseries, it's a slew of dichotomies, a frenzied cutup. It's bleeding saxophone and lustrous feedback sounding somehow pastoral, and winking hooks subtly infused with venom.Pill's lyrics are severe and funny, cryptic and straightforward, but never didactic. They reliably interrogate power. Vocalist and bassist Veronica Torres, a poet and visual artist, has cited as influences J .P. 'The Big Bopper' Richardson and Ian Svenonius, apt references for her wildly expressive range. Atop the clattering rush of opener "A.I.Y.M." she uses an ambiguous narrator to complicate gendered stereotypes, while "Fruit," a coolly pulsing vamp, explores the paralysis of political anxiety.