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Pink Playground

Destination Ecstasy

(Mexican Summer; US: 1 Oct 2011; UK: 7 Nov 2011)

Shoegazer act Pink Playground was last seen on a 10” record on Regis’s Downwards label.  Now, the group is releasing its first full length on the ultra-hip Mexican Summer label.  It’s too bad there’s little to show for these breaks beyond a serious fetish for hazy, early 90s feedback-laced guitar pop. The only thing that really distinguishes the band from other retro-maniacal neo-dreampop acts is the way they apply copious amounts of reverb to the mix to further muffle the vocals and distance the melodies.  This style of music is already quite clouded, and Pink Playground obscures itself practically to oblivion.  When the group opens the album with “Fuck The World”, the title is not an angry scowl, but an open legs invitation to universal erotic communion. Despite a couple decent non-revolutionary tunes (“Sunny Skies, “Dark Bloom”), Pink Playground seems too far away, too removed, and too in debt to its predecessors to make good on this offering.

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Timothy Gabriele is a writer who studied English and Film at the University of Massachussetts at Amherst. He currently lives in the New Haven, CT region with his wife, his daughter, his dog, and two cats. He has been featured in the book Goodbye Billie Jean: The Meaning of Michael Jackson. His column, The Difference Engine, appears regularly at PopMatters. Among his many current projects is a biographical blog series chronicling his life via mix tapes, which can be read at Documentary Mixtape.


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