By It’s our Bandcamp Pick of the week, featuring the Pleasure Dome’s loud and brash LIMINAL SPACE!
The Pleasure Dome – LIMINAL SPACE
Genre: Punk, Grunge, Thrash
Favorite Tracks: “The Duke Part II (Friends & Enemies),” “Your Fucking Smile,” “Sugar”
The term “liminal space” may cause some revulsion from the Too Online, but memetic oversaturation be damned, Bristol UK punk trio The Pleasure Dome have a legitimate claim to the title for their latest EP. It was recorded in January of this year after a tumultuous and unfortunate series of events for frontman Bobby Spender. Soon after touring their debut album, EQUINOX, last year, the band was building buzz and bubbling under when they suddenly lost both members of their rhythm section, leaving Spender as the sole member of the band. Shortly thereafter, Spender dealt with a breakup, and subsequently was evicted from his home—all of this major upheaval happening within a scant few months.
Undeterred from all of this turbulence, Spender went about reforming the band and writing songs that bridged the gap between EQUINOX’s ferocious thrash-punk and the more melodic songwriting they wanted to focus on. The result is LIMINAL SPACE, songs Spender couldn’t wait to release or save for the sophomore LP. Lead single and quasi-opening track “The Duke Part II (Friends & Enemies)” sounds like 13-era Blur as sung by prime Alex Turner, and adds some hooks and cheeky backing vocals, giving definition to the band’s muscle. “Between my friends and enemies / I can’t tell who I’m supposed to be anymore / [..] do you ever sit and wonder how it all went wrong?,” Spender sings. Subsequent tracks like “Your Fucking Smile” and “Shoulder to Cry” up the attack, resulting in heavy, frantic thrash-pop tunes with desperate, panicked verses for fans of early Dirty Nil and Mclusky alike. “Sugar” is a Delta blues pastiche that wouldn’t sound out of place in the initial Fat Possum or Steve Albini discography.
The EP culminates in the ballad “Suicide,” which sounds like a more sparse and hushed variation on “Lazy Eye” by Silversun Pickups. In a UK post-punk scene saturated with artists of many different stripes, it’s refreshing to hear an act lean on the snarlier, capital-P PUNK of the term. Barring any more sudden personal or personnel changes for the band, expect more great things from this trio if they can keep the hooks this sharp and the scuzz this thick. Buy it on Bandcamp.
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