There’s discernable beauty in the broken melodies of the Pinc Lincolns’ Joy to the World. In a recent press release, Dan Colussi, the lone soul behind the Pinc Lincolns called the album “midnight mood music” and said it is “…sprawling in its own kind of busted grandeur.” Such a poetic – and prophetic – phrase. I love rolling those words around in my brain as I listen to the record, teasing out some of my own thoughts.
There’s a real tactile pleasure to Joy to the World. Colussi is a collector of musical treasures, recording scraps and songs in “bedrooms, basements, and hotel rooms” from Vancouver to Ottawa. Using just a four-track cassette recorder, a previously-loved laptop, an electric guitar, and a distortion pedal, he pieces together songs from loose ideas like musical decoupage. “Soon Soon Soon (Joy)”, “Feels So Good”, and “86’d Again” gum up your consciousness in the same way white glue would stick to your hands when you were making crafts at school. Remember the soothing joy of opening and closing your gum-covered fingertips, feeling the elastic strands of drying adhesive stretch between them? Feels so good, indeed.
The Pinc Lincolns are more about feeling than they are finesse. Without being lyrically verbose, Colussi communicates stray thoughts, fleeting glances, and minute details through his midnight mood-music. A title like “Kick Against the Day” suggests a rousing kick-ass anthem, not the reflective shoulder-shrugging song that finds Colussi in quiet contemplation (sometime around midnight, no doubt).
That press release goes on to say that the songs on Joy to the World are coloured blue, silver, and grey; another accurate description. However, there’s a rainbow of variety in the Pinc Lincolns’ limited colour palette, and Dan Colussi makes the most of his finite means.
