Track By Track: PASTEL discusses their first album in 9 years, A Lovers Manifesto
A Lovers Manifesto, the new album from Italian emo-math band Pastel, marks their long-awaited return after nine years. Fully self-produced, the record centers on themes of love, connection, and creative renewal, capturing the emotional intensity that guided its creation. Embracing a fiercely independent ethos, the band is releasing the album across most streaming platforms—excluding Spotify—while also supporting it with a global network of physical releases.
Below PASTEL breaks down each track from A Lovers Manifesto.
1. ‘Lucky Kentucky’
A wild yet charmingly quirky melodic-rhythmic paraphrase in pure math-rock style, it’s our country track that we are deeply proud of, while someone strums the guitar here and there, wearing a straw hat with a stalk of wheat between their lips.
2. ‘Albatross’
Albatrosses are able to cover long distances by taking advantage, like other large seabirds, of the updrafts created by wave motion or by changes in the slope of coastlines—both of which are dynamic in nature; they are also capable of using vertical air currents of thermal origin. These are exactly the elements we used to sonically paint our idea of traveling freely anywhere, while always feeling at home.
3. ‘Pettirosso’
Despite its appearance—small yet vividly aggressive and territorial with its own kind, as well as boldly at ease when approaching humans—this track channels its energy by embedding its own contemporary interpretation within a rock and punk foundation.
4. ‘J. Missouri’
The most rhythmic and irreverent post-hardcore meets odd urban dancers engaged in an improbable breakdance amid punk rock echoes and rhythmic explosions, all while a threatening storm looms on the horizon.
5. ‘Today? Mayday!’
Technical takeoff trials in black and white and landing in stereo Technicolor. Meanwhile, we spot vaguely prog structures chewed up to the driving rhythm of tapping dance steps, alongside classic rock ’n’ roll acrobatics.
6. ‘Thelonious’
A sincere and spontaneous dedication to the pianist and composer Thelonious “Sphere” Monk, who, starting in the 1940s, revolutionized the language of collective African-American improvisational music—both in composition and improvisation—constantly and repeatedly pushing its boundaries.
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