Pace began with Best Boy back in 2015, what we labelled “feel-good songs tinged with longing” for kids of the 80s and 90s, and followed up with a double A-side single and an EP that followed a similar pattern. The former we described as sounding as though it “should be filmed for a live concert VHS-special,” and the latter, Get Soft, merged sophisti-pop and jazz fusion to sum up the Mike Pace aesthetic: 

“Because Pace never leans more to one direction, [his music] feels like neither a sugary nostalgia-trip nor some ironic attack. Instead, and this could be said of the entire Child Actors output to date, it’s more a symbiosis between the two, a celebration that’s as interested in the fun banal stuff as it is with the more human centre.”

Which is to say, Pace’s music is nostalgic, but not in the common, empty way where recognition is exploited to shift units. Rather, he seems keyed in to the emotions and feelings that both create and maintain nostalgia, and thereby the reasons why it’s so enticing and thrilling. Such things cannot be condensed into simple explanations, but it seems pertinent that, beneath the familiar touchstones and flamboyant energy, Pace’s music is threaded with a vague yet persistent feeling of sadness, the knowledge that the present will soon be the past, and the past will now always be just that.

Smooth Sailing is a brand new full-length from Mike Pace and the Child Actors, and one which continues this distinctive examination. As always, the record sees Pace draw upon styles from the past, specifically, according to Daniel Kolitz’s bio, “progressive rock and big-tent singer-songwriter stuff from the 1970s.” Though that is a misleadingly reductive characterisation of the influences on show, as Smooth Sailing is a veritable banquet of retro delights, Pace jumping between sounds and styles from track to track in order to create a buffet of bizesized treats from all over the musical spectrum.

From opener ‘Everyone out of the Car’, with its tales of deadly snakes and big “woah oh oh” chorus, to squealing guitar rush of ‘Escape the Noise’, a track about leaving behind the glitz and glamour of rock ‘n roll, these songs are a joyous and unashamed ode to performers of the past. ‘Blaster’ is power pop, ‘Disconnected Heart’ a power ballad, and ‘Troubleshooting’ all round powerful, something between surf pop and bar band rock. There’s even a technicoloured instrumental in closer ‘Americana Manhasset’, a track for dusk or dawn someplace where sky meets road at the edge of the horizon, or rather the soundtrack for this place as seen through an 80s camera lens.

The result is almost postmodern, though without the the prevailing emptiness for which the movement is accused. Rather, Pace utilizes his eclectic and shape-shifting sound as a celebration of and part-eulogy to his array of influences, each change not undercutting the last but adding to a growing, album-wide attitude. Smooth Sailing, then, plays like a roulette wheel of vintage sounds, a jukebox as found at the wedding of an obscure uncle. Or perhaps an old radio from the seventies unearthed during a loft clearance, plugged in and found to be still tuned to frequencies of its time, a twirl of the dial cycling through the ghosts of stations past, each one dedicated to its own specific strain of classic rock joy.

We’re delighted to be able to stream the album in full, so grab your headphones and a pair of sunglasses, and prepare to set sail.

The post Mike Pace and the Child Actors – Smooth Sailing appeared first on Various Small Flames.

“Music large and loud and lively, the kind of great so-serious-its-not (or maybe so non-serious-its-serious) energy that should be filmed for a live concert VHS-special”

Not content to stop there, the intervening months have seen Pace looking for ways to further flesh out his sound. The answer to moving forward it seemed, involving digging through the past, gathering the multitude of loose ends that constitute his favourite hits and weaving them into one long and complicated rope. As Pace describes: “For this latest batch of tunes, I figured since I’m probably never performing live again, why not indulge my myriad musical tastes by jumping headfirst into hard-to-replicate mini-epics?”

Get Soft is the resulting EP, a release of four songs which “travel from sleek mid 80’s inspired ‘sophisti-pop’ to smooth jazz fusion to mid-tempo psych groove-fests to melancholy synthesized mediations and back.” If this sounds quite the journey then that’s because it is, packing the sort of energy unique to pre-millennium TV, where everything is loud and bright and bursting with positivity.

Opener ‘Audits & Surveys’ is the perfect example, kicking things off like some glorious new dawn of old feelings. With lead vocals by Alana Amram, the track plays like an early 90s corporate lifestyle, maintaining a flashy optimism that seems both genuine and not, as though beneath this world of surfaces lies a fear or dissatisfaction that triggers not some deep existential demise but rather a deeper love of the shiny top layer. So while the lyrics are packed with self-deprecation and regret, the music itself never slips from its jubilant tone, and, because Pace never leans more to one direction, the track feels like neither a sugary nostalgia-trip nor some ironic attack. Instead, and this could be said of the entire Child Actors output to date, it’s more a symbiosis between the two, a celebration that’s as interested in the fun banal stuff as it is with the more human centre.

“I cut corners like a real close shave
Business casual is my middle name
I may look like a fool but I’m really a knave
four out of five would agree”

The title track plays like the theme to the best sunny cop farce never written, Adam Swierczynski and Ian Evans setting the tempo with bass and drums before the delightfully big guitar finale. ‘Caravan the Coast’ sees Lira Yin offer dreamy backing vocals, the track a glad-to-be-alive ode to cross country travelling, and a pop number for optimists more generally. There’s more than a hint of melodrama behind the buoyancy (the enthusiasm for utopian escape must suggest there’s something to run away from, after all), though again Pace refuses to let the elated tone slip, the track building into a frenetic crescendo which serves as a figurative ride into the sunset, even if a literal one is some way off.

“Soon enough we’ll be somewhere warm just beyond the chill
Caught outside in a summer storm
Like you hope we would

Long time leaving – tougher than most
But I’d love to have you join me
Join me as we caravan the coast”

The electronic instrumental ‘Eleuthera’ closes the release with a slice of digital tropicana, perhaps the clearest sign of melancholy on the record. However, with its swelling synths providing a near-spiritual promise of sustenance, it’s unclear whether it’s that late-evening vacation sort of emotion that’s somehow linked to transcendence, or a deeper sadness triggered by the confrontation of yet another image. Maybe the seascape here is being beamed from the fogged-up window of a travel agency’s concrete office, the warmth on your face merely the promise of sun, or just radiation from the screen’s cathode glow.

Get Soft is out now and you can get it on a ‘name your price’ basis via the Mike Pace Bandcamp page.

Cover photography by Greg Andreacchi

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On a related note, things are gradually getting busier for us in other areas – Liam works full-time and I’ve gone back to school – so the old two posts a day routine might not be maintained too often any more. That said, in an effort to keep things ticking over, we’re going to introduce a new ‘Flash Review’ feature where we cover albums in less words than we would otherwise use. It’s not ideal but a short piece is better than no piece. There’ll still be a good smattering of the usual style too.

Tracklisting:

1. Birthstone (Reprise) – Pet Cemetery
   2. Vice – Roundheels
   3. Forever – Boosegumps
   4. So Long – Heavy Boots
   5. Long Walk To All Sorts of Place – Fanpage
   6. Feathers & Leaves – Ocean Floor
   7. Down Predator Souvenirs – Lejsovka & Freund
   8. Vacation – Florist
   9. 2. – Old Earth
   10. Never Good Enough – Eerie Summer
   11. EZ River – Wilder Maker
   12. Thumbs – Claire Cottrill
   13. If I Were A Portal – Evening Hymns
   14. Jenny Come Home – Andy Shauf
   15. Only Friend – Valley Maker
   16. The Flood – Mike Pace & the Child Actors
   17. Close Call (Adderall Anxiety) – Shaky Shrines
   18. Nancy Kerrigan – Frog
   19. Kaleidoscope – Arbes
   20. The Book of Love – ARMS

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“Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers… a wistful celebration of what we had [which] presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do”

Pace is back with a double A-side single which may or may not have been recorded at The Rolling Stones Mobile Recording Unit with the help of “a murderers’ row of jazz ­fusion session talent” including Bill “Church” Wellington (keyboards), Du’vel DiGiorgio (bass), Coke Stevenson (trumpet), Tony Kukoc (soprano guitar) and Dan Van Dyke (drums), the non-fictitious Lira Yin (vocals) and producer Matt LeMay. The release sees Pace expand on the new direction hinted at on Best Boy, pushing toward a more expansive, poppy sound. As he explains:  

To paraphrase REO Speedwagon, badly, it was ‘time for me to [spread my wings and] fly, musically. I don’t really play live these days. I have a young family. I exclusively buy bargain bin progressive and AOR records. I recently got really into tennis. In other words, I like to push the boundaries, and I may as well use all of these things to help  inform and craft my new songs.

The release opens with ‘The Flood’, giving the first taste of the new boundary-pushing Child Actors. Opening with sparkling synths, the track develops into a jubilant pop song which finds glory in a seemingly miserable/dangerous life (the opening line, for example: “Here comes the drugs wash over me/their wake will take us out to sea”). Right up to the final triumphant horns and keyboards, the track does not let up in its elation, pushing a Hold Steady brand of transcendental joy/love, the sort which creeps through the cracks of a life filled with high stakes and morning afters.

“Here come the drums, rain over me stuttering start of the daylight dawning
fathers yell and mothers weep crawl on our knees soon enough we’re walking shed a tear at ‘Hey Nineteen’ another love crashed in-between

Open the floodgates, cut us loose then we’ll catch our stride
Close your eyes and stay by my side the realest thing that you can do tonight”

Second single ‘Red Sauce Revisited’ combines the various ingredients of radio hits from through the ages, opening with 60s surf strums and touching upon 70s rock solos, 80s power pop cheese and 90s melodrama to become a four and a half minute singalong homage to the good old FM stations of the US of A.

“Signs are on the ceiling, writing’s on the wall
There’s a terrifying feeling I won’t see you anymore
and I cannot stop the bleeding so I’ll learn to love the pain
I never thought that this is how it ends”

So basically, if you like your music large and loud and lively, the kind of great so-serious-its-not (or maybe so non-serious-its-serious) energy that should be filmed for a live concert VHS-special, look no further. Michael Pace has arrived, and he has company.

The Flood / Red Sauce Revisited is available for download on a pay-what-you-can basis via Bandcamp.

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So opens Best Boy, the debut album of Oxford Collapse frontman Mike Pace in the new guise of Mike Pace and the Child Actors. Well, with a bit of imagination. Maybe it’s just my overblown reaction to the news that a major part of Oxford Collapse is back and making music. One of the well-respected-but-only-moderately-successful bands that saw me through the mid to late 00s, Oxford Collapse represent a good time in my life, a rose-tinted period filled with new experiences and old comforts. Aptly, Pace’s album is concerned with these very things, exploring the promises the past made and how our future selves are still looking back at them. After the initial triumphant build-up, ‘Up the Academy’ sets out this idea of uncertainty and unfulfilled dreams, “And we hope and we pray like we did yesterday that everything’s gonna be fine”, and even more global views about the lack of the utopia that was expected. “Cracks increasing, Continental Divide… Moral compass clearly not aligned”.

If all this talk of unfulfilled dreams has you expecting a dour album then think again. Listen to ‘Summer Lawns’ and tell me that it’s anything other than joyous? Even with lines like “And we drive on highways past abandoned stores stocking things we always wanted but could not afford.“ Tracks like ‘Summer Lawns’ and ‘Cold Calling’ typify the generally straight-up and sincere attitude Pace employs, an all-so-American blend of joy, hope and disillusionment. ‘The King of Corona’ is a pop song in the best sense, a catchy chorus, slight melodrama, a sprinkling of 90s cheese, but it still manages to confront expectation, disappointment, loneliness etc. in an interesting and nuanced way. Similarly, ‘Kiss & Fly’ goes for the stadium electro-rock feel, channelling Springsteen and Simon, without losing sight of the important stuff: “’Someday soon we’ll be alright,’ he said with conviction while locked out from the inside.”

Best Boy is for the children of the 80s and 90s, reminiscing about the age where entertainment exploded, where VHS tapes and cable TV transformed us into constant consumers. Of course, as consumers we were sold promises, told we merely needed x, y and z to be happy and successful and pretty and popular. It’s kind of ironic that a time built on visions of the future is now seen as a utopia locked in the past. Pace gets at this feeling by writing feel-good songs tinged with longing, nothing too sad or serious (80s/90s kids don’t take ourselves too seriously), nor a Father John Misty-style ironic assault. Instead, Best Boy is a wistful celebration of what we had and presents some convincing reasons for why we feel the way we do.

The album is being released on the 13th January. Check out the official Mike Pace and the Child Actors site for more information. Stream the album over at Stereogum and watch the video for ‘Fire Sale’ below.

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The video below has a brief sample of every track off of the new album. The only downside is that they are all playing at the same time. So, unless you have some particularly tight-lipped political prisoners to interogate, or belong to the psy-ops division in some far away army, the video only serves to whet your appetite and give you some idea of Mike’s sense of humour.

If you want something a little more listener-friendly, check out the lead single from Best Boy below. ‘Summer Lawns’ is everything you could want from a project rising from the ashes of Oxford Collapse.

Best Boy is pencilled for release on the 13th January via The Self-Starter Foundation. We will be putting up a much more in-depth review in good time.

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It is therefore with great pleasure that I introduce The Child Actors, a new project from former frontman Mike Pace. The two songs released thus far are fun and summery and, more importantly, have that much-missed Oxford Collapse charm. Here’s hoping that a full-length album will follow. Purchase both track from the bandcamp page.

P.S. If you are not familiar with Oxford Collapse, do yourself a favour and check them out. Start here, here, here and here. If you’re still interested, buy Remember The Night Parties and Bits and enjoy!

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