SOFT HELL

Vinyl LP pressing including digital download. 2018 release. Soft Hell, Pill's sophomore album for Mexican Summer, is a raucous, splintering dispatch from New York City, animated by the madcap ingenuity of a foursome finding a palpable sense of joy and play in expressions of caustic, black humor. Like the contradiction of the album title, which references our acceptance of everyday miseries, it's a slew of dichotomies, a frenzied cutup. It's bleeding saxophone and lustrous feedback sounding somehow pastoral, and winking hooks subtly infused with venom. As the city quickly becomes a members-only club for the monied, hostile to the artists and culture that attract them, PILL defiantly answer this crisis in declaring "we take strength where order fails." Like the Upright Citizens Brigade (another one-quarter-female four piece) said before them: "Our only friend is chaos." In the case of Pill, chaos is the genderless fifth member.