- Pleasure Symbols are back, after three years in a gauzy, gothic chrysalis, a shadowy new butterfly has emerged, resplendent in various shades of grey. Core creative member Jasmine Dunn has said goodbye to Phoebe Paradise, who’s busy being a fashionista. In her place Jasmine has built common creative cause Steve Schnorrer (from Barge With An Antenna On It) and together they’ve modulated the Pleasure Symbols sound and grown Closer And Closer Apart.
2016’s self-titled EP presented fairly sparse, synthy post-punk that was both unapologetically lofi and awash with reverb. My benchmark for that sort of hazy, funereal sound has always been the completely over-the-top, endless echoing of Jon Maus and this was definitely in that ballpark.
Come 2019 and things are similar but different. Pleasure Symbols still adore the echo chamber but they exercise more moderation. In a similar way the sound displays much more fidelity than before allowing the new surges of baleful but also sweetly melodic guitar to dominate proceedings.
Here Dunn and Schnorrer come a lot closer to the sound of one of Australia’s gothic greats, HTRK, but in the process have actually moved a bit beyond that too. Where Pleasure Symbols were once washed out and enervated, much like HTRK, there’s something vital and urgent about Closer And Closer Apart. Dunn references this when talking about the new record: “[it] may seem initially harrowing, but look closer and you will see vulnerability and tenderness triumph over the struggle of the human experience.” I agree, this isn’t the sort of coldwave that's all artificiality and a stylised lack of emotion. In fact I think it’s the opposite.
To quote a little more of Dunn’s own thoughts, it appears to be the creative partnership between her and Schnorrer which has governed the emotional tenor of the record. “We forged a friendship as two strangers with similar interests who learnt about each other slowly during the songwriting and recording process. Little by little we felt comfortable to push the boundaries within ourselves and with each other. It is daunting to be vulnerable, to allow other people into your world and to open up something so deeply personal for all to view.”
To be honest, as Pleasure Symbols go, I like both the new and the old. The voracious, consuming world always demands the new, something more from artists, however. To offer it something intimate, vulnerable in this way, was a risk: vulnerability is not a quality that's not often treated with compassion. Happily, the greater risk that Pleasure Symbols took has given us a record that is a lush and just reward.
- Chris Cobcroft.