Album Review: PINS – Wild Nights
2 min read
PINS’ Wild Nights is a mess, but it’s the kind of mess that has been constructed with a paradoxical precision. Although the driving force behind the work is a kind of renegade chaos, at no point does it ever teeter totally into collapse. Over the course of eleven sterling tracks, the record tiptoes up to the brink of utter destruction, before pulling back right when it matters. In short, PINS are the kind of band that know exactly how much care you have to put in when creating a record that sounds carefree.
Although every track on the record could be lumped together under the oh so murky ‘alternative rock’ banner, in truth, PINS switch up genre, style and tone with frenetic abandon. On the one hand Wild Nights offers up songs like Got It Bad, a track that finds the thrilling place where doo-wop and shoegaze overlaps. Then, on the other, the record swells with more ‘typical’ rock fare: supercharged anthems like Baby Bhangs, Young Girls and Too Little Too Late.
But that said, even the simplest songs on the album rattle and rage with an intoxicating complexity. Though Dazed By You bursts with the kind of bittersweet joy bands like Beach House and Best Coast have forged a career from exploring, there’s nothing derivative about the number, and the languid tone feels artful and considered rather than flabby. There’s an interesting remove to the track, as though the song is being crooned by an ever so slightly bored bystander describing a car accident. It’s the illogical viewed through the most logical of lenses, and the separation between the medium and the message genuinely impresses.
Molly may well be the record’s true highlight, however. PINS aren’t the first band to wrap up drug innuendo in their lyric, and they certainly won’t be the last, but they nail the confused feelings of dependency, delight and delirium with a real talent and power.
All in all, Wild Nights is intelligent, intimate and emotive, often all at once. It’s the kind of music one can sit and pull apart for hours, but it works just as well as an experience that totally bypasses the head and goes straight for the heart. You can think about it, or you can feel it, but either way, it will consume you.
