Pale Seas - Places to Haunt

As the vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter for Southampton’s Pale Seas, his thoughts (and music) are largely driven by a certain apprehension towards life. And, over the course of Places to Haunt - the band’s debut EP - it’s clear that anxiety is the band’s greatest strength.

Anxiety, it seems, is more or less how the band got its start. Scott began writing music when he dropped out of college three years ago as a way to both give him something to do and to channel his feelings about where life might take him. He then put a band together, put out a couple of singles, and now this EP.

While it may seem that four songs’ worth of casual pessimism towards life would be a chore to hear, the way that Scott and company deal with such feelings is almost…uplifting. For example, take this slightly chilling line from “Sleeping”: “Everyone knows that we’ll all die alone/And one way or another, we’ll be on our own.” Yes, it’s a thought that’s a tad depressing. But it’s tempered later in the song with, “But I’m happy to talk if you’re happy to stay.” Coupled with contemplatively strummed acoustic guitar and an electric guitar bath, it’s closer to a realistic look at life than a high school sophomore who’s just discovered Nietzsche.

Elsewhere, standout track “Wicked Dreams” beautifully rides the fence dividing desires and wishes from actual dreams: “You’re just another game for me to lose” vs “These wicked dreams are lullabies to you.” Whether what’s being described is dream-like or life-like, the effect is the same. The melody, one of the prettiest this year, matches the melancholy-via-malefic outpouring. Then there’s the guitar solo - it’s alternately hopeful and soul-achingly lost both in its brief composition and its execution.

Which, oddly, explains the closer, "Evil Is Always One Step Behind". At almost half of the entire run time, it’s the EP’s most deliberate song. Recalling Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine” with its thoughtful guitar surrounded by hollow reverb, the song builds to a climax as the final words are reluctantly uttered: ” Why won’t all this just stop?/You’ve taken everything I’ve got/Now all I’m waiting for is the drop”. From there the song slowly relaxes itself into an synth foam as the electric guitar wanders without a clear path. And even as Places to Haunt fades away without any true resolution, you realize that maybe there didn’t need to be one.