pale saints guitar sound/tone

They had so many amazing guitar sounds. The first thing that came to mind was "Baby Maker".

xp: does that work, legally?

(it's the cheapest / easiest way that people recommend. send it registered mail, don't open it on arrival, then at least the post office has a record of something being sent. you should probably get something notarised though)

http://24.media.tumblr.com/0b543d991264f6e2e93edeaeadc5d83f/tumblr_mw08upqgEV1rijwyno3_1280.jpg

is this the only pale saints thread on ilm? and what a stupid thread this is as if blind people were talking about the sun. an amazing band with a unique otherworldly feel. "in ribbons" has aged astonishingly well. the only other bands i can think of right now who have created a similar heavenly sound are the cocteau twins and mbv.

agreed, "In Ribbons" might be my favorite album of that era. tho I think the rhythm section keeps the sound a little ways from heavenly.

whooo, Pale Saints how ironic.

i have not listened to this band in forever, i hung out at my friends house on Tuesday and he was playing drums. he started playing songs from The Comforts of Madness and i was blown away. they sounded so good and the drummer is out of his mind on some of the tracks. that and the Mrs. Dolphin comp were fucking great. didn't like In Ribbons as much at the time as Ian Masters sort of took a back seat, they were his band and it showed on those early cuts.

i am just listening to "comforts of madness" for the first time. the drums are pretty impressive, often extremely fast and mixed into the foreground, you are absolutely right. but pale saints - to me at least - are not about drums. they haven't yet found their magic sound on "comforts". and it also lacks in the tunes. the band is still on the search. on "in ribbons" they have reached their peak, they have created a masterpiece. when i first listened to it 23 years ago i found ian masters voice a little thin but in hindsight it fits perfectly to the rather subdued, introspective music. it is the kind of backgroundish music you get totally hooked to when you hear it first. a reason might also be that it is pretty quiet music which demands from the listener to open up his ears if he wants to hear something.

My favorite was always "flesh balloon". A couple of their best songs (best-sounding, at least), a pleasantly baggy instrumental and that gorgeous Nancy Sinatra cover.

> they were his band and it showed on those early cuts.

i think they were more of a symbiosis - judging by how the band sounded after he'd left and how he sounded on his later works (spoonfed hybrid, esp summer, sore and steel, friendly science...). they were a lot more ordinary, he was maybe too esoteric.

i prefer in ribbons as an lp over comforts despite comforts having better songs. ribbons is more mixed, and the way comforts is all sequed together makes it awkward in these days of shuffle. (it's also very quiet - it's been normalised as one long track and there's a loud bass note on one of the tracks that just means everything else is too quiet).

I find nothing particularly original or unique about PS but they are very enjoyable!

Pale Saints never got the proper respect, they were one of the best from the era. Moka brought this up in her thread and got me to remember this. love the drums, with that wonderful bass line and then add the guitar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lly7ATDItdQ

in ribbons is a goddam masterpiece, comforts of madness is p good too

madness >>> ribbons

i even liked their third and last album Slow Buildings even though their heart and soul member Ian Masters quit. Meriel Barham (also of Lush) took over vocals but she was around so it didn't feel like a replacement. they went for a more pop sound and it sort of worked.

It was nice, but it wasn't Pale Saints to me.

this band is so fucking criminally underrated, this is inspiring me to run the Shoegazer poll very soon.

Sea of Sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syIiTesQnJU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjAXcqZ6YRc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOn4gMzwdw0

that drumming is for the gods!

then they turned into this, which i happen to also love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk4FF5huCo4

A Thousand Stars Burst Open
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9vOko4Yii8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUNGtgXK77w

i will close with this (again the drumming):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyD9V34AApc

what a band, i haven't listen to them like this in a very long time. they did not disappoint in the least. ILM just happened to be the forum tonight.

now i want to hear Moose.

drinking again tonight and went off on the drumming yet again but the Pale Saints are all about the guitar sound.

Fantastic band, really liked that Dum Dum Girls cover. Ian Masters post-Pale Saints work is well worth your time as well.

Time Thief is one of my favourite shoegaze songs. Pale Saints should do a reunion tour every other shoegaze band has by now. See See Rider can support them

Relistening to Comforts of Madness tonight for the first time in ages. It's brilliant.

Seems like a band that has faded away for anyone who wasn't there. A lack of reissues is probably part of the reason.

I see a lot of movies, and read a ton of books, that I really like, but can't remember a single thing about them a month later. I wished it worked this way with music, and Comforts of Madness is one of those records I'd like to forget about, so I can enjoy hearing it anew every so often.

I rocked Mrs. Dolphin yesterday. I play that one maybe once every 3 months or so, without fail.

In Ribbons is positively classic 90s dreamy British rock. I want to say Hugh Jones is a huge part of the thick guitar sound there. Comforts sounds so thin to me, not a big fan really

"Hunted" is my favorite. So so great.

Comforts of Madness is easily my favorite non-MBV shoegaze album. It's so propulsive and varied (Opal cover! Cat cover star sample at the end). Its only flaw is that the re-recorded "Sight of You" is slightly inferior to the raw-er sounding EP version. Ironically the lusher EP version of "Baby Maker" is far superior to the In Ribbons version which sounds like a demo. I'm actually not a fan of that album at all. It just makes me want to put on the earlier stuff.

I'm with you, Spencer

I bought In Ribbons and remember being slightly disappointed by it at the time, but now I can’t really remember much about the tracks on it that hadn’t already come out on EPs. Throwing Back The Apple was good and there was one with Meriel singing something like ‘between the (?) you should hold someone’ but everything else has been wiped from my memory. Whereas I remember every detail of Comforts of Madness.

I discovered them via Throw Back the Apple (from 120 minutes play I guess). Got the album and felt massively disappointed. Didn’t bother with them after that until 10 years ago or so. I’ve liked the stuff I heard since but I guess I would need to read up on them to better understand their discography

i love in ribbons so much. it is divine, an album without fault and quite varied. that misty shoegazing sound will always remind me of my late youth (late twenties). maybe it helped that i was there.

i never got into comfort of madness. which i heard about at least 20 years later.

people talking abut the Pail Saints makes me happy, i had the chance to see them two times.

1. The Comforts of Madness
2. Mrs. Dolphin
3. In Ribbons
4. Kinky Love EP
5. Slow Buildings

tho at the time i still believed in Slow Buildings. it really was a let down after Ian Masters left the band however.

Stupid auto correct Pale...

The Comfort of Madness is their master piece. Might rank it

...above Giant Steps

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Comforts-Madness-30th-Anniversary-Remaster/dp/B07ZW8VWS5/

woo!

excellent, they could do with a comprehensive singles comp too

Such a great album. I was pretty disappointed with everything else that came after, it was probably down to the Hugh Jones production. He seemed to have a knack for softening the rough (interesting) edges of a lot of 4AD and 4AD-like bands (see also Heidi Berry, Ultra Vivid Scene, Kitchens of Distinction, Frazier Chorus) of that era.

Hugh Jones did In Ribbons too!
i've said my peace (piece?) re comforts of madness

That's what made me think of him! Just more a fan of the rough edges, I suppose. Not in general but def as far as the 4AD sound goes...

In Ribbons sounds pretty great right now. I thought it slightly tepid at the time, but like it a more with the passage of years. I marginally prefer "Babymaker" here, I think, though that EP might even be their high-water mark overall.

Speaking of which, I notice 4AD has recently uploaded this nauseating video at better resolution than I've seen it before. Bless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU39Gu4lX_0

demos sound pretty tight, like they'd been practicing them a while. and they have starts and ends, unlike the lp versions.

that second side, from language of flowers to the end, is still quite a rush.

oh wow, so happy to see this!

Oh my God, In Ribbons got a 30th year reissue today!:

https://4ad.com/news/30/8/2023/inribbons30thanniversaryreissue

I should have polled it

now it will get on all the playlists and tv shows <3

These demos are pretty interesting. Always thought this record sounded a fraction too neat and laboured over. (But I always say that sort of thing lol. Not about to claim these are the definitive renditions or anything challopsy like that.)

Here is Ian Masters talking over lead vocals on "Kinky Love" (Demo):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmVi8JeFO5M

A 15 minute History clip with talk about In Ribbons at the 7:25 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPWk2yOpCZk

Glad to now have three readily available versions of "Babymaker" to rotate through. I've seemingly needed to hear that in particular at least yearly since I was a schoolkid. No idea what Masters is getting at lyrically but it's a strangely moving/bracing/uplifting? ditty.

> now it will get on all the playlists and tv shows <3

iirc there were prominent posters in the radio station on Neighbours back in the day - mushroom had just signed a distribution deal with 4ad

very little proof of that is to be found on the internet, very hard to even find out the name of the radio station in neighbours, but discogs has scans of aus version of the sleeve and that has a liberation logo on it...

https://www.discogs.com/master/26780-Pale-Saints-In-Ribbons?country=Australia&image=5334152.SW1hZ2U6MTA5MzI0ODM%3D

hmv had copies (copy?) in the new releases when i was there this morning and a copy of Comforts in the rack.

my copy is still in the post 8(

my copy is here, my stereo is a pain to get to at the moment, but i made the effort today

it sounds, on the stereo, muddier than the original (usually heard using earphones). or is that just me?

now working through demos, nice to hear ian's stab at kinky love.

🎵Especially for Koogs...🎵

https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/4xPcKYif69LT.png

I wanna tell you, you mean all the world to me...

Ha! I hope many many Australians bought it as a result (subliminal or not)

I haven't got around to listening yet, need to rectify that

If we polled this, I would pick “haunted” in a heartbeat.

I remembered buying the "Haunted" EP thanks to the above doc I posted. I think I'm going to go ahead and poll, maybe even next week, Madness hope to get a few votes as I have no idea how it will do.

Certainly a contender for best 1992 album expanded/reissued in 2023.

“Hunted” is really something, and that Flesh Balloon EP was great. Probably my peak of PS obsession, Meriel boosted then ruined the band for me.
I’d be tempted to vote for “Shell” because (a) nobody else could do that and (b) what incredible growth from the earlier stuff.

Comforts of Madness > Half Life, Remembered > In Ribbons > Flesh Balloon

“shell” is amazing too. the cello, the soaring guitar lead, the mallets… <3

xp I guess "Kinky Love" does suck, but I like "Porpoise"

Hey, very cool:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/pale-saints/looking-back-30-years-to-the-creation-of-pale-saints-in-ribbons

Thanks for that, Ned

In which world does Kinky Love suck? Recently listened to the original for the time - never realised how raunchy those lyrics were

It feels like they’re trying a bit too hard to be funny, but at the time I think I liked it.

kind surprised that it's ian interviewing there, i had him down as some kind of recluse (even though he's been in more post pale saints bands than the others probably by a factor of 5)

Ian’s EP Kingdom of Heaven (with Warren Defever under their old ESP Summer name) from a couple of years ago is astonishing. Especially for fans of Pale Saints, if you like to play those “what if Ian stayed for the third album” games

Also, the only time I heard of Isolated Gate anywhere (and their stuff is excellent) is on this board, from Ned; not a word anywhere else, not even a side note during press for In Ribbons reissue. No wonder Ian is pissed off about that in the article.

♥️

time to hit Bandcamp while I still can

Side note: does anyone remember the Institute of Spoons website from ~20 years ago which used to load with an audio file of Ian announcing the name?

that was mostly a Friendly Science website iirc, which seemed to be a label designed to confuse

i mean in that interview Ian complains of things getting boring but if his idea of the alternative to that is this then...

https://www.discogs.com/release/925170-Various-The-Winner-Is-The-Loser

Thanks for sharing that Paste interview! It answered some questions that I had - primarily, why the studio version of "Blue Flower" wasn't on the 30th anniv edition (which was originally a bonus track for the U.S. release). I didn't know Ian didn't want it on the album and didn't think it was that good (I like it - and the Slapp Happy original and the Mazzy Star cover too). I got the CD version of the 30th anniv edition and was frankly a little baffled, thinking "there is plenty of space on the CDs for more bonus tracks!" So that's addressed in the interview:

Paste: Is that part of the reason that that song and the other b-side from the “Throwing Back The Apple” single didn’t get included in this reissue?

Ian: I think it was more or less a decision to try and keep to the tracks that were on the original LP, demos of those and the brass band recordings because it would have been too expensive to have a double LP plus 7”. Those may get put on another compilation at some point.

Having the non-demo version of "Kinky Love" would have been nice, too - but if they end up putting out another compilation, as Ian mentions, that's cool too.

I also wish the 30th anniv edition booklet had a little more effort go into it - at least, more than just a few (small) photos and three quotes from band members.

Spoonfed Hybrid album being re-released for Record Store Day with album of demo versions.

Gonna have to dig out Hibernation Shock this weekend. Found it in a used bin a few years back and have only listened to it once, I think.

Enjoy!

Rotten news -- Graeme Naysmith has passed:

RIP! The other day I was just lolling at a silly picture of him someone posted on ig.