- The inventive second album by London based Pixx weaves together many different threads from pop and electronica’s past to make something precise, beautiful and new. The adventurous sonic environment and broad scope of Hannah Rodgers’ songs hints at strong potential for epics, but the thirteen tracks here are honed into tightly structured, radio-friendly lengths. This discipline lends focus and urgency to an album that should find a wide audience.
Rodgers’ stacked vocals and unique feel for melody and harmony means Small Mercies sounds like Pixx and not much else. The vibe is often dark, otherworldly and slightly disconcerting, but never bleak. It helps that Pixx’s gothic incantations and sci-fi dreamscapes are regularly punctuated by bursts of wet, jangly guitar that evoke the theatrical side of Britpop acts like Elastica and Mansun.
Songs that appear to be one thing open up and twist unexpectedly and seamlessly into their opposite. Down tempo highlight Duck Out pulses with Massive Attack-style darkness until the chorus shifts into an ethereal Kate Bush singalong. Time and again Pixx delights with surprises like this. Pulling them off with such ease and grace marks Rodgers as a supremely natural and gifted songwriter.
Her collaboration with production partners Simon Byrt and Dan Carey has delivered a rich and coherent listen - no small feat given the diverse material. That the whole record wears a golden reverb halo like the work of Pixx’s 4AD label forebears Cocteau Twins just adds to the album’s “uncanny valley” sense of an '80’s and '90's sound that never quite was.
Small Mercies’ span is further widened by the distinct lyrical worlds assembled for each track. Religion, the patriarchy and pending environmental disaster each receive a pure and unwavering spotlight. Sublime opener Andean Condor is playful, cutting and feminist, while first single Disgrace elegantly damns the church to hell.
Pixx also devotes attention to the personal, with great effect. The lust and possessiveness of title track Small Mercies kicks off with deranged synth bass and builds into a layered banger. Album closer Blowfish’s earthing refrain of “you left without notice / I heard that your heart was intact” reminds us that all these grand visions and world worries exist alongside the more intimate concerns of a romantic.
The only half-misstep is the bratty and freewheeling Bitch. It has hooks aplenty but lacks the gravity that unites the rest of the album.
Pixx’s excellent 2017 debut Age of Anxiety set soaring expectations that Small Mercies has easily surpassed. Rodgers has set up a future without limitations, and at just twenty-three years of age it’s likely Pixx is due for a long and powerful prime.
- Phillip Laidlaw.