With the bittersweet stream of melancholy trickling through the half speed drum machine, Patience – aka Roxanne Clifford’s – plaintive appraisal of life’s turmoil, a period spent changing, aches across the ages. With The Pressure, Clifford’s songwriting continues to soar into new territories and textures, here providing irresistible Italo-disco hooks with a classic cry/dance backbone. The Pressure takes Patience’s crystalline synth-pop further into the dry-iced corners of a club in 1983.. though here Clifford has managed to marry a cold production, aided as before by Happy Meals’ Lewis Cook’s engineering, with the inherent sweetness in her vocal. The Pressure never relents, with pulsating waves of harmony and crisp snare cracks building like the greatest early Mute Records 7” they never released, an ode to relationships and the craziness they inflict on us.
Patience, aka Roxanne Clifford of Veronica Falls fame, released her debut single, The Church, earlier this year, and it not only almost instantly sold out, it also received near unanimous acclaim and an unstoppable wave of hype. That it was very good helped of course, as is her second single, The Pressure, which she shared earlier this week.
The Pressure takes the listener back to the hey-day of synth-pop, pitched somewhere between the electronica of The Human League and the indie-pop of The Pastels. In the best way possible The Pressure sounds a bit like a soundtrack to a 1980’s documentary about the future, all icy electronic production and sweet, multi-layered vocals; its triumphantly walks the line of harmony and other worldliness. Patience remains a virtue as we await details of a full length release, but by the time it does come round to being released, the wave of hype might just be deservedly unstoppable.
The Pressure is out September 30th via Night School Records.
The Fat Angel Sings 