Pastels/Tenniscoats - Two Sunsets

The evocative title of this collaboration between Glasgow’s Pastels and Tokyo’s Tenniscoats neatly summarises its scope, cleanly articulating the twin creative impetuses and their distant origins on the banks of the Clyde and the Sumida. These titular skies cast shimmering reflections in the music’s deep pools of willowy sighs and gentle swells, with opening instrumental Tokyo Glasgow making the record’s duality unmistakable. There’s no abrasive culture clash here, only harmony.

Tenniscoats singer Saya’s bilingual vocals demonstrate that listeners don’t necessarily need to understand the lyrics to be moved by the sentiment, but those couplets that are discernable are unabashedly lovely - in particular the fragile lament that glides on Song For A Friend’s intensely pretty melody. Elsewhere, Start Slowly So We Sound Like A Loch makes floating in icy waters sound positively lush, while Saya’s own description of Sodane’s flute as “like cherry blossom falling from a tree” might sound twee and pretentious if it weren’t so apt. Two Sunsets, then, is a tale of two cities: an enveloping delight both familiar and unusual, gentle in its tempo yet invigorating in its possibilities.