ABOUT
THE PATRIOTIC SUNDAY is a harbour.
A harbour that stays firmly on land while people come and go and songs of long lost friends and old memories are crooned at bar counters and in cheap hotel rooms.
Eric Pasquereau writes songs to find his way back home. His ever-changing band follows the tides and the wind. THE PATRIOTIC SUNDAY began as a general plea to an ex-girlfriend, a man coming to terms with lovelessness and teenagehood. On his 2005 début « Lay Your Soul Bare », Pasquereau developed a flawless blend of indie-rock influences, jazz chords and bossa-nova rhythms which were as sincere as the confessional lyrics that led the melodies.
After several years pursuing his other project, PAPIER TIGRE, Pasquereau then attempted something of a pocket pop symphony with « Characters » in 2009. Liberally scattered with multi-layered brass and string arrangements, the album pays homage to the classic sound of 60s pop - Pet Sounds or Sergeant Pepper’s – whilst simultaneously referencing the more twisted modern pop of Anticon’s Why or Thee More Shallows. Whilst the music is immediate and accessible, lyrically the album explores denser, less palatable themes: vivid imagery juxtaposed against ironic detachment belies a preoccupation with death and indecision.
The folk-rock inspired « Actual Fiction » mixes the well-balanced with the distinctly off-kilter. Backed up by the band La Terre Tremble!!!, THE PATRIOTIC SUNDAY has matured to the point where it is comfortable in its own ambiguity. Leaving behind youth’s desire to show off and to be loved, « Actual Fiction’s » scratchy guitars and scary diary entries perversely reveal experience and self-confidence. Stripped down, essentialist songs (“Quiet and slow”, “A set of seemingly disconnected words”, “Belgrade”) and more complex and elaborates structures (“Grey hair”, “Coathanger in the Party Room”) are united by the same modus operandi: the desire to craft the spontaneous miracle of a great 3 minute pop song in the vein of these wonderful craftsmen: Caetano Veloso, The Kinks, Jim O’Rourke and The Silver Jews.
Even if your ship sails today, you know where to come back to.
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