Although Pickle Darling’s Lukas Mayo expressed a post-Laundromat desire to escape the trappings of traditional linear song-craft, Bots, their fourth album, is an absolute wonder: a beautifully strange and strangely beautiful sea of sounds- signalling a continuing creative surge from someone clearly seeking new sonic sights. It’s also full of undeniably soul-enriching songs that loop and lull and linger long after the final notes cease.
The suitably enigmatically titled Bots is an undeniably curious conglomerate concoction of shivering sounds – as if Mayo’s previous musical ideas have been over-painted onto glass, deliberately shattered and then pieced together again into new forms: a sort of cubist bedroom pop experiment which works brilliantly. Each note was apparently recorded individually and then meticulously arranged into its finished entity – and whilst the meticulousness of this approach is clear (this is undeniably detailed and carefully constructed work), there is also a naturalness to the intimate sounds presented that balances the almost alien, robotic stylistic choices to form something indelibly human. On Steps, Mayo whispers, ‘You deserve a better universe/ This one is cruel, but you can be/ proud of all the work you’ve done.’ Well, Pickle Darling should certainly be more than a little proud of Bots, difficult sometimes to see clearly, though it is.
This is an album that repays repeated, concentrated listens (headphones in…world silenced) to begin to understand the tricksy, dichotomous games at play here. Its entire construction is conceptual – there are thematic paradoxes at every turn, too, as if each song is in a state of perpetual metaphysical flux. The production is unrelentingly focused: every track brings in perfectly timed ambient noises, rich in wavering, wonky textures; there are retro bleeps and woozy hums, kalimba-esque twinkles and trembling tape undulations, and sudden distorted fizzes that are an absolute delight. Vocally, they intertwine whispered intimacy, deliberately lo-fi asides and playful post-hyperpop manipulation to great effect, too. This is where the heart of so-called ‘bedroom pop’ beats most brightly – you can hear the late-night, clandestine hours of thoughtful tinkering and toil in each track, where each and every detail matters. But Mayo knows where to keep the creaks and fissures in – this does not feel studied or overwrought. There are enough cracks to let the light shine in.
It recalls at times the sounds that might splinter from a broken children’s musical toy; nostalgic and futuristic in equal measure, dreamlike and dystopian – providing a series of symbolic and sonic pushes and pulls that leave you beautifully bewildered. It’s still got its feet in the ‘twee pop’ leanings of earlier tape label releases (and what a lovely place to stand when scanning beyond the horizon too)- but this is very much an artist spreading their wings and reaching previously distant places, their signing to Father/Daughter Records clearly giving them the confidence to stay true to their creative urges. Citing influences as wide-ranging as Four Tet, The Books, Neneh Cherry’s Broken Politics, The Wrens, Madonna’s Ray of Light and Robyn’s Body Talk – this still remains undeniably the sound of no one else but Lukas Mayo; no one sounds quite like this.
Chord progressions for all their aesthetic echoing of a sound-corroded digital future, where melodies have been stretched, chopped and even reversed, also remind at times of Elliott Smith’s acoustic structures- particularly in the moment just before the rhythm breaks and the lyrical mantra pours forth on closing track Infinite Trolley. It’s another wonderful ghost that haunts this beautiful album, in which new things can be constantly found, and nothing is quite as it initially seems.
Lyrically oblique and often surreal – there are moments of heart-reeling openness too. It also seems to be grappling with ideas of what it is to be human in an increasingly AI-induced unreality. As they sing in Obsolete: ‘Every part of me/ Says my hardware is obsolete/ I’m thinking thoughts I can’t repeat.’ Or on the Human Bean Instruction Manual, where Mayo claims that, ‘Everybody comes with manuals or batteries’. Who is actually saying these words is hard to pin down, but it adds a further layer of obfuscatory semantic fog that these fragmentary songs allow themselves to be submerged so fully within. It’s described as an album where frictions are key – old and new, organic and digital, melody and noise; this makes perfect sense the more one listens. I love how they have chosen to start the album with spoken word sampling Obsolete – seemingly teasing the listener before finally allowing its lulling, tentative vocal melody to step into the light. This isn’t trying to be easy music despite its often pop-evoking influences and sonic palette. Words paint eye-catching collages and sometimes dreamlike collisions – the phrase, ‘I found a note written in crumbs inside a biscuit tin’ from Congratulations Champion is a perfect example: it’s like a memory from childhood that’s blurred and refocused into something new.
Lukas Mayo has stated that they “wanted to avoid capturing a performance as much as possible, everything had to be fragments, and I wanted to show as much of the recording and editing process as possible, leaving all the seams exposed.” And you can hear this concept to the very last note. Above all, though, this is music that you want to listen to fully, to return to and to think about once the music stops. And that’s what I want from a songwriter who’s so clearly invested in the album format. Albums as we know them have existed for only the smallest sand-grain of musical history. Bots feels like it has been sent back from the fractured future- damaged, distorted, fragmented – but showing that the album as a means of delivering an idea more than the sum of its parts is built to last. Pickle Darling stands on solid ground.
I hope Bots reach many ears, both now and in that already reached future. It certainly deserves to.
Written by M.A Welsh (Misophone)
