Drift Away with Pastels’ Debut LP “Love Garden”

By Justice Petersen

In her debut full-length studio release, Vietnamese Melbourne-based producer Pastels (Annie) causes listeners to feel relaxed and at peace through a diverse tracklist and dreamily unique compositions.

Love Garden, Pastels’ first LP, comes out June 2nd. With nine tracks that flow seamlessly into one another, Pastels says her biggest goal with this record is to make listeners “feel like they are in a warm, romantic, and luscious garden party.” With most of the album being instrumental, consisting of soft, lo-fi beats and variations of vibes throughout, she says that many of these songs are open to interpretation for the listeners. While each song offers a slightly different tone, the entire work gives off a dreamy energy, and every song is something to sway along to. Love Garden is the perfect album to put on when driving home from a cocktail party through rainy city streets.

The title track’s opening song is mellifluous with its soft beats and muted vocals. Through her instrumental tracks, Pastels writes songs that have enough going on to keep you hooked but not so much that they’re overstimulating or jarring. Although songs on the album like this one are more upbeat, they still maintain a calming quality to them that is present throughout the entirety of Love Garden.

With instrumentals such as “Sway Closely,” “Wet Roses,” and “Nightride,” listeners can feel a sense of peace as they don’t have to think so much about interpretative lyrics or messages. Instead, these songs are meant to feel and can be interpreted however listeners want. “Wet Roses” is a lovely highlight from Love Garden. With soft piano playing over the sounds of rain, this track is as beautiful and delicate as a rose.

Love Garden, in its entirety, is so calming, warm, and fuzzy. This orchestral track, combined with more beat-oriented tracks like “Love Garden,” makes the album more diverse and well-rounded. Similarly, while most of the album has a sense of tranquility and closure, songs with more vocal parts, such as “Consumed,” have a different kind of rawness and emotional vulnerability.

From this release, Pastels shows that she can compose unique and intricate pieces with no two songs sounding the same when compared to one another.

In her music, Pastels can also perfectly encapsulate entire aesthetics, feelings, and visuals with no actual images or vocals incorporated into her work. The song “Nightride” featured on this album has a very noir film sound. It sounds like what would play in the background of an old black-and-white true crime film as the main characters drive through dark alleyways. As the album comes to a close with the songs “Dreamfield” and “Divine Pleasures,” listeners are left with a relaxing sense of wonder.

As you sit through Pastels’ Love Garden, you’ll feel like you’re in a nostalgic and dreamy garden. Pastels wants listeners to feel as though they’ve been brought to another setting throughout her projects. Like you’ll be brought to a garden in this album, her previous project, a double EP titled cafe a.m. and cafe p.m., gives listeners the feel of what might play in their favorite coffee shop. However, what is most captivating about Pastels’ work, and what may be found in Love Garden, is her beautiful ability to bring listeners to a new world entirely.

In “Consumed,” which features Eileen Sho Ji as a guest artist, the lyric “Crave the way you make me lose my sense of time” best encapsulates the warm, fuzzy feeling Pastels’ embodies throughout the record. Pastels’ Love Garden, listeners will find that they lose their sense of time in the most reassuring way.

Love Garden comes out TODAY!

Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pastelsmusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annniebui/