Los Angeles musician Pascal Stevenson’s solo debut harkens to ’80s goth rock, but at the album’s core lies a righteous intellectual ennui.
As post-punk band Moaning traversed Europe on tour in 2018, bassist Pascal Stevenson crafted electronic demos in the back of the van. Stevenson had tried several times to write her own songs, but until getting sober, she had trouble putting words to them. After the tour, as she pulled back what she dubs the “veil of intoxication,” she finally began to write lyrics that felt both introspective and outwardly political. Drawing from personal experience with newfound lucidity, she eventually constructed 10 songs set to soft synths. She then polished them with drummer Nik Soelter and fellow L.A. musician SASAMI, surrounding her lyrics with grandiose new wave production. After two years of delay, her debut album Scrutiny finally arrives from L.A. electronic label Felte. The music harkens to ’80s goth rock, but at the album’s core lies a righteous intellectual ennui.
Stevenson’s lyrics are direct and even accusatory, cutting through washes of gated drums and vocal delay to accost those who fail to live the values they preach. “Can you justify your cruelty to the world? Are you terrified of your own words?” she asks on the scathing chorus of opener “Pantomime.” There’s a long lineage of satirical songs poking fun at false activists, like Phil Ochs’ 1966 track “Love Me, I’m a Liberal,” but Stevenson confronts her subject with earnest despair. The sneakily upbeat “Chapel” zeroes in on the guilt and frustration of a failed confrontation that ends in a moment of acquiescence. As difficult as it can be to speak one’s truth, self-negation sounds even worse when she asks, “When it’s over, who will even know?”
Stevenson handles the album’s more personal themes with the same intensity and insight, applying that search for honesty in others to herself. “Are you listening?” she repeats on shoegaze-leaning lead single “Feign for Love,” while her voice dissolves into a deliberately smudgy mix. Singing over mixed-meter verses, she spends “Dependency” debating whether it’s worth “blaming bad thoughts on my dependency” or leaving behind the numbness of addiction. Instead of harrowing or self-serious, it scans as a candid internal dispute about whether self-expression is worth it or whether pain is better left repressed.
Scrutiny is a defiant act of self-expression, but musically, it still feels as though Stevenson is pulling punches. With the exception of closer “All in Time,” she sings in a dry baritone throughout, ironically obscuring the power of her lyrics. At times, her brooding melodies outright clash against the thin drum machines of “Phantom English” or bright guitars of “Failure.” And even though this album looks deeply within, there was one more layer to peel back: Long after the record was completed, Stevenson came to terms with her gender identity as a trans woman, lending further weight to the album’s themes of repression and self-deception. This personal revelation recontextualizes the frustration at the heart of Scrutiny: relentlessly searching for truth and only finding more to uncover.
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