Pikelet
Pre-Flight Jitters

The context of listening to Evelyn Morris’ last release as Pikelet – her debut self-titled album – is significantly different than that of EP Pre-Flight Jitters. The album was, I would venture to say, primarily bought by people bamboozled by her incredible live show, in which she constructs lush, multi-instrumental avant-pop songs using one thing at a time and a loop pedal. It would have been bought as much to express praise as to take home a piece of an unrepeatable, nigh-magical performance. Pre-Flight Jitters is listened to in less of an impressed haze, and in more of an evaluative frame of mind.

As if sensing this, Morris has shed the simplicity of composing maudlin and compellingly innovative pop, and turned to a more challenging soundscape aesthetic. The five tracks on Pre-Flight Jitters feature not even the minimal singing that the album did, and the soothing drone of the EP’s repeated sounds replaces the album’s tightly composed structure. Claps, of course, return, as does Morris’ accordion, glockenspiel and floor tom, but they do so with an unnerving anonymity and lack of drive. Or rather, it is not that a drive is lacking as much as a drive is resisted. With restraint, Morris introduces the palette of each song, subtly varies it, then either lets it wither or pulverises it with noise.

It is true to say that there is not much punch on this record, that its appeal lay more in the pretty eeriness of Morris’ tonal choices and present but distorted humming. But it is also true that this is not a fault. It lightly picks you up, applies some caressing, some probing, then puts you back down again, a little shaken a little breathless. Still, one hopes that on the next record she makes a move from the subtle to the spectacular.

by Matt Giles