Pinkunoizu – The Drop

Pinkunoizu’s ambitions have always been as large as the world they’ve explored. Time spent travelling through Asia’s dusty plains and the rolling greens of Earth’s continents have created a mini travel diary that’s been crafted into the Danish four-piece’s music. Those familiar with debut album ‘Free Time!’ will fondly remember its psychedelic melodies scrapbooked by a medley of trippy didgeridoos and antique guitars.

Well-travelled footprints are still imprinted throughout ‘The Drop’, but they’ve got a new destination set for this album. The heavy baggage of glossy production and strict time signatures has been abandoned for a more free and energetic record; this method explored in last EP ‘The Second Amendment’. Two tracks from that EP feature here. ‘Moped’ and ‘Tin Can Alley’, and they’re still as frenetic as ever: layers of flimsy jams that recall the vibrancy of their exotic travels.

So many influences flat-packed into one might be higgledy-piggledy in the hands of another band but Pinkunoizu do it effortlessly, guiding you from polar opposite to polar opposite. ‘The Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ opens with scraping synths and vacant vocals but takes a sunny detour into lofty bass lines, Asian flutes and delicate keys. The otherwise sinisterly named ‘Necromancer’ is surprisingly sunny: bubbly synths float besides lofty Echo and the Bunnymen type melodies. Elsewhere, the dramatic ‘I Said Hell You Said No’ brilliantly mixes Bond-esque flamboyance and Native American chants.

The band has referenced the Iraq War and America’s gun control legislations previously and they waste no chance in taking wry swipes at certain issues here. See ‘The Swollen Map’: a sombre piano medley snidely criticising pointless journeys (“Hide the treasure in your chest / You can’t spell the secret word / When there’s no riddle to be solved”).

It all ends with the repetitive ‘Down In The Liverpool Stream:’ a blustering cycle of creaky guitars, fluttering percussion and longing vocals. An unexpected choir joins in at the end, reminding us of their ability to constantly surprise. A promising album that should make the next journey with them all the more exciting.