I never read other reviews before I write mine. Primarily because I tend to find myself delving into the realms of subconscious plagiarism, especially if the review read was from someone I consider a better writer than me (i.e. all of them !).

However, I do read the self-penned band bio’s on Spotify (I can hear the “boo-hiss” from all the bands / fans who hate them, but naturally still use them) and Bandcamp (now mostly owned by Spotify anyway!) and really cannot resist the erudite and infallible nature of this one:

“No Museums: A homemade hybrid of creaking pop and basement rock, using an array of textural devices and hummednoise. 

Echo boxes, delay pedals, soft distortion dynamics and guitars with buzzing strings. There is drift and there is direction.”

In the common parlance that is far nearer to my usual prose, the above is ‘spot on’.

The “hummed noise” is the core foundation of Edmonton based, Micheal Betmanis’, No Museums solo project and over the prolific course of 11 albums since 2014, he always manages to find slight nuance changes to the hum, that present his latest sound as something different, but equally as beautiful to all that has gone before.

Pale Bue Eyes is certainly no different as it trawls through varying states of whirring melodics. At it’s most dark and dense The Killer Whale, Advancing The Fleet and Fuck Them Up Before We Land, advances the sound through a The Black Angels aesthetic, that could be dismissed as drone, if it was not for constant invasion of melodic riffs fighting their way to the surface. It is a conflict of sounds that Betmanis has always perfected.

When the drone declines several levels of repetitive brilliance, tracks such as Shipwrecks From Now On and Advancing The Fleet allow more respledent fuzz- laden, jangled riffs to become apparent as the union of the sounds of Guided By Voices and Neutral Milk Hotel become more respledent.

However, the very best of this album can be heard in An Education, Now, As It Snows, the superlative stand out of Mausoleum and Shipwrecks At The End. All these tracks present No Museums at it’s most intense and most beautiful, as the whirr, whilst still very much present, becomes subservient to jangled riffs that are as lucid as anything that Betmanis has released before.

Betmanis will most probably be back in six months with a another stunning album. Until then let this one wash over and through you.

OUR FAVOURITES

SOCIAL MEDIA

INSTAGRAM / FACEBOOK / TWITTER

FULL RELEASE