Pregnant Mannequin, by The Mistys

Pregnant Mannequin

by The Mistys

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

£7 GBP or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Pregnant Mannequin via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 4 days

£17 GBP or more

1.	Bite Marks 03:55	buy track
2.	Fewer Babies, More Things 04:18	buy track
3.	Womb 03:59	buy track
4.	Velvet Water 03:50	buy track
5.	Heat Death 03:18	buy track
6.	Cut By Degrees 03:07	buy track
7.	Celluloid Skin 04:01	buy track
8.	From The Light 03:11	buy track
9.	Blades And Boardwalks 03:43	buy track
10.	Metabolisms 03:59	buy track

about

Pop subversives Beth Roberts and Andrew Hargreaves (The Boats, Tape Loop Orchestra) pose their 2nd album as The Mistys with ‘Pregnant Mannequin’, following some five years on from their debut album ‘Redemption Forest’. It basically sounds like an incredible, saccharine shoegaze/dreampop album recorded to a salvaged D90 tape that's about to disintegrate, warbling in and out of time.

Referencing a wealth of pop archetypes via their uniquely claggy, recombinant filter to render a new vision for subversive pop music, Beth Roberts’ sugary vocals are smudged and buried deeper in the mix, processed with fizzing textures that only add an extra poignancy and a sense of struggle to the classic pathos of her voice. In key, Andrew Hargreaves lends some of his most sharpened, devastating hooks, bringing their project closer to a polysemous conception of ambient-EBM-pop.

The formative experience and naivety of 2013’s ‘Redemption Forest’ album has given way to a newfound complexity over the five year interim. It’s there in the sense of gauzy ambiguity that oozes through the record’s synth, drum machine and vocal construction, with results that speak to a mix of uncertainty and determination, asking and answering ideas of imposter syndrome that can sometime undermine the urge to self-expression.

The diaphanous scale of ‘Bite Marks’ welcomes us into their distant, yet familiar world, where the tape worn cadence of Beth’s vocals leave indelible marks on the mind in ‘Womb’, and ‘Velvet Water’ leads us down a pinched ginnel of darkwave pop, to arrive in the stately air of ‘Heat Death’. At their most forceful, they’re still a pair of tender souls, though, as in the push and pull of tempered rage and romance in ‘Cut by Degrees’, while ‘Celluloid Skin’ sees them offer a warm, fuzzy embrace of shoegaze-pop akin to The Cocteau Twins heard underwater, and the dark blue swells of ‘Blades and Boardwalks’ and ‘Metabolisms’ reveals their natural affinity to what was once called Witch House, and can now be heard as a modern form of cold wave or gothic synth-pop - styles that take their pleasure from a feeling of negative ecstasy, an effective inversion of ‘poptimism’.

Proper bittersweet and addictive pop feels on this one...

Boomkat

credits

released November 8, 2018

license

about

The Mistys Manchester, UK

contact / help

Contact The Mistys

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like The Mistys, you may also like:

People and Industry
by Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan

supported by 6 fans who also own “Pregnant Mannequin”

Great record. wears it's influences proudly ..but retains a sliver of identity that is uniquely British and has a northern feel to it..I think that these geographic musical vignettes are realy evocotive of northern Newtown Uber estates and satellite communities..I hope this translates to a wider audience for him...he deserves the attention. give him his due .NOW . christopherogley
go to album
Interim Report, March 1979
by Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan

supported by 6 fans who also own “Pregnant Mannequin”

Amazing!!! I missed out on the vinyl. Hopefully there’s a 3rd pressing of this release in the future. So far, my favorite album of 2021 Worm Tamer
go to album
The Nation's Most Central Location.
by Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan

supported by 5 fans who also own “Pregnant Mannequin”

This is very close to what I heard/felt everytime we visited the grandparents in Runcorn. Ominous dread. Bleak dystopia. Concrete and terraced houses. Plus the air smells! MonkeyMajiks
go to album
Pepe. - Balance LP
by U Know Me Records

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 23, 2024
go to album
Dulcitone 1804
by Nightports w/ Matthew Bourne

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 23, 2024
go to album
Passions
by Halogenix

featured on Bandcamp Radio Apr 23, 2024
go to album
Districts, Roads, Open Space
by Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan

supported by 5 fans who also own “Pregnant Mannequin”

This is up there with Pye Corner Audio and The Advisory Circle. Excellent stuff. Andy Ralph
go to album