Pale Blue Eyes – This House review

The sleeve art for This House depicts a happy couple outside the front door of their home; like many things on Pale Blue Eyes second album it’s presence is more than just symbolic. The people in the photo are Matt Board’s parents, and the process of making both the band’s records has been overshadowed by their respective loss, his father five years ago and his mother more recently. Inside those walls were decades worth of memories.

The significance of their passing had been especially poignant, not just because Pale Blue Eyes is made up of Marr, his wife Lucy and bassist Aubrey Simpson, but also because it resulted in the end of their self-built Penquit Mill home studio in Devon and a subsequent decamping north to Lucy’s home town of Sheffield. With such change comes a whole range of emotions, lots of which in one way or another are manifest on This House.

To the trio’s credit it’s far from the potentially mawkish exercise this reads like written down. Instead the reverse applies, the material by turns a progressive confection of retro synth pop (Simmering) motorik road music (Opener More) and MDMA fuelled psychedelia (The exceptional Sister). Only once, on the epic, shoegazing final track Underwater is the happiness-from-sadness idea put to one side. This House is built using other people’s memories, but offers a celebration of them, as opposed to the echoes found inside an empty room.

You can read a full review here.