Picastro "Exit" by Sleeping Giant Glossolalia/SGG Records
Although Picastro’s lineup, instrumentation and sound have shifted over time since they started just over 20 years ago, the Toronto band’s voice has stayed strong and consistent. At any given time, whether Picastro is currently constituted towards the more abrasive or pastoral end of their personal spectrum, whether it’s a few people or a larger ensemble, whether it’s acoustics or electronics (or both), Picastro (and more specifically mainstay Liz Hysen) have kept the same gloriously dark, compellingly rich tone, even through the kind of gaps you tend to get with long-running bands that mostly fly under the radar. With the band’s lineup over the past few years stable and among the best Picastro has ever been, it’s perhaps inevitable that the often restless Hysen would take that stronger structure and try out an experiment she’s been considering for years: mostly removing her own voice from the equation in favor of others.
Most of the vocalists on Exit's eight songs are men, which was a deliberate choice; in order to make crystal clear how many Picastro songs are narratives, not autobiography, Hysen often pointedly sings from the male perspective and has talked about finding the idea of writing for male vocalists interesting. That might not be clear from the beginning, though; Great Lake Swimmers’ Tony Dekker has not only sung with the band before (see “Mountain/Relief” from 2014’s You) but here on “Mirror Age” he seems almost to be making an effort to sound like Hysen. If you’re familiar with Picastro’s work the result is bewitchingly off. Elsewhere the change is more apparent, whether it’s Dekker himself (the only repeat vocalist) on “I Spy,” Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart shivering through the beginning of “Blue Neck,” or Big Blood/Cerebus Shoal’s Caleb Mulkerin warbling over the stomping, sawing, beeping “A Trench.” When Hysen does take the lead once, on the downcast, swirling “To Know” it both fits neatly with all the other voices folded into Picastro’s sound here, and as a stark reminder of why her presence as singer is so key to the band.
Throughout it all, the instrumental part of the current Picastro lineup — Hysen on acoustic guitar and sometimes piano, Nick Storring on cello, Matthew Ramolo on synthesizers, and Germaine Liu on drums — gives the many voices on Exit a strong, stable base to work from. It’s often Hysen and Storring taking up the more straightforward, driving part of the melody, allowing Liu to provide color and accents (although the latter is perfectly comfortable with a more conventional timekeeping role when needed) and Ramolo to both layer sounds and sometimes to almost twist and distort the songs through his interventions. At their strongest, as on the stretches of the closing “This Be My Fortune” where they take over from Marker Starling’s Christopher Cummings, or in their Petra Glynt-aided deconstruction/crawling exorcism of Sonic Youth’s “(She’s in a) Bad Mood,” they provide ample evidence that they don’t need any voices to be compelling.
All of which makes Hysen’s successful experiment here so interesting. None of the guests here, whether well known in their own right or not, stick out the way outsiders, especially singers, sometimes do. Picastro has always been a broad tent, but here it proves even more accommodating than listeners may have guessed. The authorial voice present on past albums sounds just as strongly through other throats as through Hysen’s own, and the songs are as strong as ever. Whether this opens up a cast of characters for future use or not, the result is another intriguing album from Picastro.
