With debut album ‘Good Egg’, Lewisham-based provocateur Pet Grotesque engaged us with tender fascinations over starkly minimal DIY pop.
When honed in on, the intimacy that filtered around the recording was thick and beguiling – a droll avant-pop explorer that was comfortable in the reserved nature of their recordings. Now, with new single ‘Scratch’, Pet Grotesque is embracing a slightly more high definition sense of lucidity.
Investigating a combination of forcefulness and soppy melodrama, PG sounds more assured – strutting in the dark amongst a minimal funk-jam – but sounds frightful in equal measure, unruly in others feelings apart from their own and overwhelmed by their sorry obsession. It’s an intriguing juxtaposition – the simmering, amorous track giving way to the self-isolating desires of it’s conductor.
Nevertheless they sound bolder and more invigorated – the subtle ecstasies of their previous work evolving into starker, more gyrating compulsions. Pet Grotesque is putting the darker, more confidential notions of pop expression under the light, and thriving from it.
Header Photo by Conor McCarron
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