Pale Saints - The beauty hidden within pain

Among the most sensitive, yet also least celebrated, performers of the British shoegaze era, Pale Saints were a band with a short-lived trajectory, yet one that still left its mark both stylistically and, above all, in terms of compositional sensibility on the post-wave scene across the Channel, leaving traces of themselves in numerous artists who, even recently, cultivate delicate, dreamy sounds steeped in a perpetually adolescent aura, yet pervaded by a spiritual force likewise filtered through evanescent guitars and melodies.

Far from being simply a band to place in the wake of My Bloody Valentine or Jesus & Mary Chain, Pale Saints put down roots in the more introverted shades of the late-'80s wave background, onto which the brooding, delicate inspiration of frontman and singer Ian Masters was grafted.

Leeds, April 1987: guitarist Graeme Naysmith and drummer Chris Cooper answer a handwritten ad placed by Ian Masters, who was simply interested in meeting musicians who appreciated bands such as Dead Can Dance, Television, Eyeless In Gaza and 13th Floor Elevator, regardless of what instrument they played or how good they were at it. Thus, almost by chance, the core lineup of Pale Saints took shape; the band's first two years were spent playing pub gigs around Leeds and recording a couple of lo-fi demos with distinctly dark overtones: the second of these demos, "Barging Into The Presence Of God", despite the tiny number of copies made, received excellent critical response, helping spread the band's name beyond their hometown and earning them the chance to support the already more established Lush at a London show. It was there that they met Ivo Watts-Russell, owner of 4AD, who was immediately interested in the band and offered them a contract, promptly signed by the Leeds trio despite other offers received in the meantime.

Everything happened very quickly, so much so that before the end of 1989 4AD had already released the EP Barging Into The Presence Of God, made up of just three tracks, two of which were taken from the demo of the same name; they already hinted at the many artistic sides of Pale Saints: from the dark echoes of "Sight Of You" to the typically shoegaze guitar fluidity of "She Rides The Waves", to the gloomy introversion of "Mother Might".

The following year saw the release of their first proper album, The Comforts Of Madness. The relentless pace of the opening "Way The World Is", bordering on a kind of percussive punk, is strikingly direct, coiling around an enveloping, immediate vocal flow. The stylistic choices aren't always perfectly aimed, but even so the songs are well written, and the coexistence of different souls never feels out of place. It moves from sharp shoegaze structures ("You Tear The World In Two") to vaguely noisy, delightful pop songs ("Sea Of Sound").

Ian Masters' superb voice stands out immediately, precise and flawless on the more tense tracks, capable of surprising shifts whenever the pace loosens up and a change of interpretive register is called for. Another strength, which comes through with great vigour, is the imagination with which the moments of "stasis" are handled: the liquid carpet of guitars is often jagged by metallic, alien-sounding blares, as if lone ectoplasms wandering through the weave of each composition.

The immediacy of this music proves incredibly effective and functional in the middle section of the album, where short tracks like "True Coming Dream" and "Little Hammer" take on quite different shapes. If the former oozes luciferian pain, the latter releases melodic interplay barely touched by the soft colours of a rainbow. The perfect blend of these solitary souls, or past influences, is achieved by the subversive "Insubstantial", which closes with a finale full of corrosive feedback.

The dream-pop inflections, with some ethereal touches, of "A Deep Sleep For Steven", together with the crystalline inspiration found in "Language Of Flowers" and especially in "Feel From The Sun", make The Comforts Of Madness an exquisite debut, the expression of an overflowing collective talent full of intriguing future developments. And the closing "Sight Of You" (superb) and "Time Thief" only confirm this.

While the band completed its search for a second guitarist by adding Meriel Barham, originally the singer of Lush, to the lineup, the EP Half-Life, Remembered was released at the end of that same year, almost as a seal on The Comforts Of Madness. Unstoppable in their momentum, the five songs on offer here are charged with expressive urgency, backed by a miraculous inventiveness. Worth noting: the CD version contains only four tracks, while the vinyl includes an additional hidden track.

The title track bursts with vivid colours, while the monumental "Babymaker" overwhelms with avalanches of decibels. The particular development of "Two Sick Sisters" is intriguing, mired in a series of watery effects that blend remarkably well with the drums' solemn beats.

The more accessible "A Revelation", buoyed by a very fresh noise-pop attitude, stands as the emblematic song of this early career phase, so delicate and gentle, yet also swift and nervy. The hidden track "The Colour Of The Sky" closes things out with dreamlike movements.

The following year saw the band, by now including Meriel as a permanent member, working on their second album, in the meantime preceded by Flesh Ballon, another EP, this time devoted to experimentation. The lengthy "Hunted" hints at vaguely acid psychedelic solutions, while the splendid "Porpoise" grafts an electronic rhythm onto keyboard and synth phrasing. A mysterious female voice, within the lines of "Kinky Love" (a Nancy Sinatra cover), enchants with passionate fervour, and "Hair Shoes (Demo)" springs out of nowhere to upset certainties that were never fully settled.

It amounts to little more than an interlude, a dress rehearsal for the album that would mark the turning point in the history of Pale Saints, as well as the most heartfelt artistic statement by Ian Masters, now backed by a full, versatile band, the ideal setting for his gift for songwriting and his shy yet firm compositional brushstrokes.

In the meantime, just to sum up these first years of intense yet (numerically) scattered recording activity, Mrs. Dolphin was released in a limited edition by the Japanese arm of Columbia. A highly valuable collection of the band's most striking tracks, made up mostly of previously released material, with the exception of the unreleased (and never revisited) "Colours And Shapes", whose delicate flavours streaked with strong new wave touches sound almost like a sweetened version of early Echo & The Bunnymen.

It's 1992; the year of the gem In Ribbons, a small masterpiece in which Barham's grace rounds out Ian Masters' sonic world, now painted in its most vivid colors yet and deftly able to shift between different expressive registers.

Indeed, the twelve tracks on In Ribbons aren't just made of shoegaze guitars, but a thousand other sonic facets, starting with the liquid variations and the constant emotional waves hovering over the enchanted melodies of the opening track (and the subsequent, modestly successful single) “Throwing Back The Apple”. Although the rhythm section is still very much present in the many electric passages, its impact is almost always softened by the repeated incremental harmonic openings of tracks like “Hunted” and “Ordeal”, even though there's no shortage of moments with tighter rhythms and more pronounced guitar tension, such as “Babymaker” and “Liquid”, where the female vocals spontaneously evoke comparisons to female-fronted indie bands like Breeders and, of course, Lush.

In Ribbons also has another side, though, one that makes it a precious and unique work within the shoegaze landscape, in fact setting it apart from the genre's usual blueprint. It's a dark side, yet at the same time a serene one, in which Masters' shadowy spirit manifests itself by, on one hand, developing the dream-pop hints already glimpsed on the debut album, and on the other, crafting an intimate, deeply personal acoustic guise in which he gives freer rein to his sublime disenchantment.

Masters' ethereal dream-pop slowly unfurls its emotional tension, brushing up against abstractions worthy of Cocteau Twins, especially when, as on “Thread Of Light”, it's the female voice that softens the fading electric jolts, singing lines of aching romanticism that, in the “beauty hidden in the pain”, perfectly capture the essence of a shy, reserved poetics - one that finds its male counterpart in “Hairshoes”, with Ian's vocals suspended in a placid contemplation of disarming beauty. The same beauty that, on the acoustic gem “Shell”, built around nothing more than a guitar and string arrangements, reveals a crystalline songwriting in which, stripped of the electric components - however splendid they may be - the spleen emerges in all its raw sweetness, almost yearned for in the final invocation “learn to cry, learn to fly”.

Right after the album's release, the single of the opening track, “Throwing Back The Apple”, comes out. Alongside the title track and a reprise of “Half-Life Remembered” with added percussion, two very tasty unreleased tracks are tacked on, “Blue Flower” and “Reflections From A Watery World”. The former, beautifully adorned by a sweet female voice, settles into an ethereal, suspended beauty, while the latter, more raw-edged and languid, closes out a cycle of fundamental importance for the band.

Right after reaching the peak of their career, Pale Saints and their founder go their separate ways. An artist more comfortable being than appearing, Ian Masters indeed leaves the band after the 1993 tour.

Orphaned of their most charismatic figure, Pale Saints is by now little more than a name, yet the remaining members try to carry on, pursuing a more normalized, less personal sound, clearly influenced by the grunge that was forcefully taking over at the time. Given the near-constant presence of Meriel Barham's voice, the band starts to sound quite close to acts like Belly or Throwing Muses, also due to the simultaneous arrival of a second female presence in the band, bassist and second vocalist Colleen Browne, who, although she replaced Masters in the band's lineup, could never take his place in terms of inspiration and sensitivity.

The result of this radical change is nonetheless far from negligible, and even though the subversive charge of their music has diminished and comparisons with their recent past seem ungenerous, the songs pass the test with a clear, if modest, mark.

1994 brings Fine Friend, an EP released shortly before the album Slow Buildings. The title track exemplifies the above-mentioned shift; it veers toward a guitar-driven dream-pop that's often tense and nervy, resting on a rhythm section less fussy than in the past, where Barham's graceful voice fits in beautifully.

“Special Present” kicks off explosively, with the guitar spitting out distorted, uneasy notes, before unfolding in a much more diluted and coherent way, with several very fine instrumental passages, especially when the two guitars (Graeme Naysmith and Meriel Barham) engage in a lovely dialogue. The instrumental “Marimba” highlights an improvisational flair unusual for the band.

Finally, the last recorded testimony under the Pale Saints name, the album Slow Buildings, is a jumble of ideas and solutions that often clash, being somewhat uneven; what should be acknowledged in it, however, is the band's immense effort to fill the void left by Masters, who had always been the composer of most of the band's catalogue before this record.

If fine instrumental pieces have imagination on their side (“King Fade”, the splendid coda of “Henry”), the female voice already praised above works magic on whatever songs it touches, now edgy, now gently steered toward liquid, anxiety-inducing passages. Some of the more massive stretches, like the final part of “Song Of Solomon”, sound like guitar-driven post-rock ante-litteram, ecstatic and timeless.

Given the mostly negative reception of Slow Buildings, Pale Saints' brief but intense journey comes to an end with this record. The band breaks up in 1997, leaving behind as its last recorded trace a cover of a Tom Waits song, cut for the tribute to the Californian artist titled “Step Right Up”.

Nonetheless, the band's various members carry on with their artistic careers, taking on projects of varying fortune: Graeme Naysmith and Chris Cooper go on to form Lorelei and later Detonators, while Meriel Barham pursues a solo career under the alias Kuchen, under which, in the early 2000s, she recorded two albums of delicate electronica for the German label Karaoke Kalk. Also worth noting is Colleen Browne's welcome presence as bassist on the band's third album, “Heart Throbs”.

Ian Masters, on the other hand, true to his reclusive nature, withdraws into the shadows, roaming the world between the United States, Brazil and Japan (where he currently resides) and taking on a long string of projects and collaborations, often experimental in nature and mostly released in limited editions, to the point that nearly all of them are now hard to track down.

Among the bands to emerge after Pale Saints, the first to gain real visibility — partly thanks to the initial continuation of the relationship with 4AD — were Spoonfed Hybrid, active between 1993 and 1997, who produced an excellent self-titled album and a mini-album titled Hibernation Shock. In these records, Masters, working alongside Chris Trout, accentuates the dreamier side of his music while also reclaiming the wave-inflected tones of his beginnings, now reinterpreted in a far more intimate and refined register that doesn't shy away from electronic approaches — evident on the mini-album and more subdued on the full-length, which instead focuses on an airy, romantic sound that seems to translate into a more complex, almost orchestral instrumental form the mature compositions closest to the best of what he achieved with Pale Saints.

In the meantime, Masters also embarked on a brief and, for him, unsatisfying collaboration (just look at the reference still present on the website of "The Institute of Spoons", which documents his current activity) with His Name Is Alive, with whom in 1996 he recorded the album "Stars On E.S.P.". Alongside Warren Defever, and as an offshoot of that very project, came yet another of Masters' fleeting ventures, marked by acoustic EPs released under various names such as ESP Neighbourhood, ESP Dolphins and ESP Summer: under this last name he released an interesting and little-known self-titled album.

This, however, is still the period of disorientation following the breakup of Pale Saints, a period of frantic output that nonetheless wasn't without worthwhile material — particularly the brief Spoonfed Hybrid period, to which Masters would remain inextricably tied, so much so that these can still be considered the last recordings born of this extraordinary artist's sustained creative drive, after which he would no longer be able (more due to personal temperament than lack of ability) to give continuity to the expression of his talent.

From the Miniature Album of tongue-in-cheek experimental digressions, released in 1998 under the name Friendly Science Orchestra, right through the 2000s, Ian Masters' story becomes fragmentary and difficult to piece together, made up of off-the-cuff attempts and collaborations increasingly geared toward experimentation and sounds bordering on electronic territory. Among these short-lived ventures are the tracks released as Sore & Steal and a 2003 album of noise experiments titled I'm Sore, pressed in just fifty copies, and finally the intriguing encounter with Marc Tranmer (Montgolfier Brothers, Gnac), which in 2004 resulted in an EP under the name Wingdisk.

The last news of Ian Masters dates back to 2007, when he contributed vocals to tracks on records by the Japanese alt-rock band Luminous Orange and the American electroacoustic act Dive Index.

Even though he's no longer a frontman in his own right, Ian Masters still seems almost incapable of staying away from music, the natural outlet for his shy personality, indifferent to any of the mechanisms of the show-business world and yet one of the most lucid and important witnesses of early-90s British music, a scene to which the name of his band Pale Saints remains indelibly bound.

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