ATP! Album Review: Pity Sex - Dark World EP

If you are the sort of person who finds themselves awake at 1am on weeknights watching live footage of Mineral on YouTube, willing yourself back eighteen years and getting all philosophical over the rain battering your bedroom window being in some pathetic cosmic synchronicity with your mood, then the arrival of Pity Sex will come as welcome news. Blending 90's midwest emo in the vein of The Promise Ring with the feedback flooded guitar stylings of Dinosaur Jr, their second EP "Dark World" has nailed a mood that manages to be simultaneously poppy and bleak.

Opening with the lines "How did I get so depressed? I wasn't born like this", "When You're Around" crashes directly into a heaven of lo-fi noise-pop, soaked in reverb and loaded with ragged off-key vocals, instrumental build-ups and palpitating rhythm sections before sliding to a close with gentle, overlapping lyrics and a lilting "Say It Ain't So" style guitar riff. From then on, it's a veritable tug of war between tenderness and vivacity that will have you weeping onto the scratch plate of the air guitar you will find yourself furiously hammering.

Channelling Penfold harmonies via Lemuria's male-female vocal interplay, driven along by guitar-heavy jams evocative of Sonic Youth, Pity Sex have a seriously strong and highly infectious sound that places them aptly alongside the likes of Tigers Jaw and Balance and Composure on the Run For Cover roster - through whom they will be releasing the debut full-length they are currently working on. In the meantime, do your ears a favor and let them loose on "Dark World" - a wildly contagious and heartfelt introduction to a band that are wholly engrossing on essentially every level.

5/5

"Dark World" EP is out now through Forward Records and can be downloaded for free download here.

Emma Garland