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photosBoomkat (Become Secret)
"The cult Canadian avant-folkers return with their fourth album, become Secret, a dark and very rich listening experience that finds the band's frontwoman and songwriter, Liz Hysen, at the top of her game. Beginning with the elegantly rundown piano and cello of 'Twilight Parting', the band seem to sigh into life, leading you towards the more menacing sounds of 'A Dune A Doom' which adds a cloak of static and background noise to proceedings. After all those gothic chamber-pop, 'Pig & Sucker' is about as stripped bare as it gets, teaming a chugging acoustic guitar with Hysen's arrestingly bleak and unaffected vocal. Once again, the darkness seeps out of every pore, but it's a welcoming, syrupy darkness that ensconces you in the nicest possible way. Helped along by guest vocalists like Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers, Viking Moses' Brendan Massei and Colleen Kinsella of Fire On Fire, Become Secret is a bewitching record - one that's unrelentingly gloomy, yet somehow manages to be ultimately rather heartwarming."
NME (Become Secret)
"We’ve got the apocalypse all wrong. There’ll be no devastation or nomadic hordes of men gnawing babies’ toes. Instead humanity will peter out with a whimper. In the final days, small pockets will remain, and their final laments of our history will sound something like Picastro. Haunting mantras ‘Split Head’ and ‘A Dune A Doom’ are all mournful chanting piano that rumbles on the edge of a tune, broad brushstrokes of cello and guitar plucked with the weariness of imminent doom, sung by the deathly Liz Hysen, her vocals an unholy wedding of hippy nihilism and goth. End-time celebrating religious nutbars won’t be finding much eternal hope here, but for everyone else, a perfect soundtrack to the approaching void. (7/10)
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Luke Turner
Norman Records (Become Secret)
"Picastro are a Canadian group specialising in melancholic outsider rock with a gothic/neo-classical edge. 'Become Secret' is their latest opus after critically acclaimed releases over the last decade. Monotreme put them out over this side of the Atlantic and rightly so, they're a captivating listen. I can hear many parallels with the likes of Cat Power & Dirty Three. A graceful, tender sad music. Lovers of Thalia Zedek/Come & even the relatively short lived 90s band That Dog could easily fall in love with some of this heart rending chamber rock but most stunning of all, the awesome 'Split Head' comes snaking druggily out of the speakers like the bastard love child of Mazzy Star, Bardo Pond & Rachels. I'd like to see this rather wonderful band receiving the accolades that lesser bands get, they've got this intoxicating Toronto heartbreak sound, i'm rather surprised they're not on Constellation."
Boomkat February 2010 (Become Secret)
"The cult Canadian avant-folkers return with their fourth album, become Secret, a dark and very rich listening experience that finds the band's frontwoman and songwriter, Liz Hysen, at the top of her game. Beginning with the elegantly rundown piano and cello of 'Twilight Parting', the band seem to sigh into life, leading you towards the more menacing sounds of 'A Dune A Doom' which adds a cloak of static and background noise to proceedings. After all thos gothic chamber-pop, 'Pig & Sucker' is about as stripped bare as it gets, teaming a chugging acoustic guitar with Hysen's arrestingly bleak and unaffected vocal. Once again, the darkness seeps out of every pore, but it's a welcoming, syrupy darkness that ensconces you in the nicest possible way. Helped along by guest vocalists like Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers, Viking Moses' Brendan Massei and Colleen Kinsella of Fire On Fire, Become Secret is a bewitching record - one that's unrelentingly gloomy, yet somehow manages to be ultimately rather heartwarming."
Plan B Magazine April/May 2005 (Metal Cares)
"Hey, Long silence from me. I'm sorry. You know how it is. Listening to the new Picastro right now. The piano sounds a bit too much like you – we discussed their first album Red Your Blues one time, didn't we? It swam past me last year, almost worrying in its absent presence: a friend fast fading. This one is different. It's totally here. Elizabeth Hysen's voice is closer and tougher and yet broken also. The whole thing's more pressing. Makes me think of a band hunching together somewhere cold in Canada. There's this one song, 'Dramaman', where the tuning's exquisitely loose. It starts with almost nothing, then breaks gently into a chorus that freaks me the fuck out. It's so what a violin should be doing, opening up these pleading vistas for the singer to twist around in. Their songs are always so suggested and so suggestive, they're like ghosts of songs, drifting and shapeshifting. Only this time the ghosts are strong; angry. You know? Beautiful bare bones. You'll like it. Do you have a proper address yet?"
Frances May Morgan
boomkat.com (Metal Cares)
"Resplendent in a hand-etched case that looks like a well-worn school desk, the second album from Toronto based Picastro slips comfortably into the slipstream created by their debut 'Red Your Blues'. Undoubtedly familiar to many through their recent appearance on The Wire's 'Tapper 13', Picastro share much with the elongated grandeur of God Speed You Black Emperor or a downtempo Masada, building wrath-like structures of cello, guitar and waterlogged rhythms around Liz Hysen's mournful voice. Weaved from a cornucopia of disparate musical styles and influences, 'Metal Cares' is belligerently eclectic in it's intent, borrowing post-rock structures one minute ('I Can't Fall Asleep') and Eastern European Folk the next ('Ah Nyeh Nyeh'). Yet whilst it casts a wide aural web, 'Metal Cares' can always rely on the hypnotic vocals of Hysen to provide the necessary cohesion, bringing a real sense of emotional burden to songs like 'Blonde Fires'. Also including a remix from Kid606 cohort Dwayne Sodahberk, 'Metal Cares' is experimental in the most pleasingly eclectic fashion imaginable."
Rock Sound - September 2005 (Metal Cares)
"This second album from Toronto Quartet Picastro is perhaps even more morose than the sullen beauty of their previous album. 'Red Your Blues'. led by singer Elizabeth Hysen. 'Metal Cares' renders her dread-filled vocals far higher in the mix than before. while her lyrics read like a checklist of neuroses and fears including insomnia, nightmarish dreams and sharks. Most tracks are built on a subtle interplay with guitarist Zak Hanna before cascading into doom-filled crescendos of piercing strings and funereal drums, with Spartan plucking on 'Dramaman' rushing into a terrifying wail, and the indecipherable Russian folk song 'Ah Nyeh Nyeh'full of shrieks and moans. Not one to warm the cockles of the soul then, but an often tragically beautiful album stuck between swoonsome melody and the black dogs of depression."
(7/10) Neil Gardner
The Independent - Saturday 31-7-05 (Metal Cares)
"On their second album, this Toronto quartet continue to mine a dark yet fuzzy and warm soundscape of violin and guitar, fronted by the compelling, haunting vocals of Liz Hysen. Comparisons to Godspeed You Black You Emperor! and Dirty Three are inevitable, but Picastro also lay down all sorts of eastern European folk vibes. The beauty of the album unfurls slowly but surely."
(4/5) - Tim Perry
Sunday Times May 2004 - Pop CD of the Week (Red Your Blues (UK))
"IT'S RULE No 1 for music critics: don't be taken in by a good cover. In the case of Picastro, whose cover resembles something from Rothko's little-known "arts & crafts" period, the music lives up to the artwork: bold, simple, slightly off-centre, hard to ignore. Picastro live in an alternative universe, one where the cello players beat the singers in the race to be front man. Or, indeed, front woman. For, while Picastro have a singer, Liz Hysen, and while Hysen is clearly the one in charge, her vocals are submerged in the mix, with Stephanie Vittas's cello lines snaking out front. The result is somewhere between the Dirty Three and Electrelane. Others have compared Picastro to Godspeed You! Black Emperor and other post-rock notables, but Picastro have none of the bombast that this implies (or, rather, on the rare occasions when they try the bombast route, they don't quite pull it off). No, this is something subtler - post-folk, really. What raises Picastro above the herd of atmospheric noise-makers is that, hidden though the vocals may be, these tracks aren't instrumental jams, they're songs - with all the structure and emotional closure that this implies. Red Your Blues can be bleak, but it's also beautiful."
Mark Edwards (3/3 stars)
The Wire June 2004 (Red Your Blues (UK))
"Ostensibly a vehicle for singer-songwriter Liz Hysen, Toronto based Picastro weave her songs into an abstract framework of extended, moody soundtracks. Here the singer’s identity is absorbed into the overall impression left by the music. Reported comparisons with Cat Power are therefore wide of the mark. Hysen’s role is oddly selfless, her voice subdued to a general murmur amid the music’s burgeoning drama. The songs are instead a vehicle for the group to expand their vocabulary, creating a gloomy variant of folk blues with a wide reach. Once the context within which Hysen as singer and author is established, the lack of lyrical clarity or a firm songwriting identity no longer matters."
Tom Ridge – Avant Rock
Straight No Chaser - Spring/Summer 2004 (Red Your Blues (UK))
"...albums on the Way Beyond Nashville tip for those folk who can’t wait for the next compilation...Picastro are out of Toronto and bring lo fi minimal classicism deeply etched with lyrics of a dark loneliness to the masses. The Nico-like Liz Hysen is their chief muse, vocalist and Dada fiddle player. Cellist Rachel McBride, drummer Evan Clarke and guitarist Zak Hanna join her fragile but deliciously morose sonic universe. Their ideal gig would ‘maybe be in a church, where we’d be hidden in catacombs and you could walk around and hear us play but then had to find us. Like Hide and Seek, that would be cool! Some people would probably just think it was dumb’ You get the picture...."
Flux Magazine May/June 2004 (Red Your Blues (UK))
"Soon the terms ‘Canada’ and ‘post rock’ will be synonymous. it’s all down to Constellation Records, those strings over bass and guitar. Maybe the natural reaction to a country famed for its space and fog is to create this strong music? Lead singer Liz Hysen comes over like a dulcet Cat Power, equally scattered, slightly less tuneful. Her voice, one of many layers of delicate sound, is as organic to the band as the lone cello cutting through the silence."
Kate Macdonald
Rock Sound Magazine April 2004 (Red Your Blues (UK))
"Picastro is an edgy and somewhat mysterious project led by Liz Hysen, a Toronto-born singer songwriter raised in a deaf family who learned to sign as her first language. When first released on California experimental album Pehr this subsequently sold out and drew comparisons from Cat Power to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, perhaps due to its reliance on slowly arpeggiating guitar crescendos and disconsolate violin and cello, while Hysen’s monotone delivery recalls a doped-up Thalia Zadek. However Picastro is a much more restrained project, with string accompaniment adding ballast closer to Rachel’s swoonsome melancholy rather than Godspeed’s politicised bombast, and Hysen’s muted, almost immersed vocals, particularly on the spiky but tender, ‘The Sea Will Kill You’ and the yearning closer, ‘Dakar Relay’ give ‘Red Your Blues’ a hauntingly introspective quality. Beautiful handmade packaging too."
(*******)
Absorb April 2004 (Red Your Blues (UK))
"it's a wonder that picastro ever found a home: this, their debut release, was first put out in the us by small indie pehr because no one in their hometown of toronto knew how to place them; as one magazine put it 'they're not poppy enough for teenage usa nor weird enough for a more experimental avant-garde label'. although many of the band's members are classically trained, the music wears that heritage lightly, using it as just one of the complex layers in the mournful harmonies that veer from pared-down rock polly harvey-style to stream-of-consciousness forays into post-rock territory (some have compared them to godspeed you black emperor!). strings are a dominant feature: cello and violin weave a tapestry almost modernist in its disciplined repetition (like a kind of reichian mantra), notable on 'mine'. liz hysen alternately murmurs and moans her way through the vocals, soft and bleak one moment, impassioned the next, as on 'fifth wall'. the tunefulness of the compositions often seems undercut by hysen's almost wilfully unengaged delivery- at times she comes across a little flat- which doesn't always do justice to what is otherwise a complex and satisfying piece of work."
Elizabeth Wells
Q Magazine April 2004 (Red Your Blues (UK))
"String Heavy Sadness From Toronto
The soundtrack of an early episode of 24 seems an unlikely place for Picastro to have turned up: reminiscent of the lyrical orchestrations of avant-poppers Rachel’s, their music isn’t an obvious companion for Jack Bauer’s mauling and shootings. Yet their debut album is heavy on doomy atmosphere, with violin, cello, piano and guitar all creating a sense of incipient menace that might well accompany the worst day of your life. Singer-songwriter Liz Hysen sounds like Nina Nastasia six feet under and, while there is some occasional meandering, this debut is a beguiling way to spend some down time."
Victoria Segal (***)
Logo Magazine March 2004 (Red Your Blues (UK))
"Suspended beautifully on the bridge between lightly melancholic and hopelessly bleak, Picastro’s debut recording is an appetizing affair. Sharing a close kinship with the brooding atmospherics of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Rachel’s, Picastro’s low, sunken heart bleeds desolation. By intermittently running her monotone vocals through all manner of edgy soundscapes, Liz Hysen guides and nudges ‘Red Your Blues’ from embryonic acoustics to swollen, string-laden epics that ooze tension - a tension that has in fact prompted a number of these tracks to feature in early episodes of the series of 24. Admittedly it’s far from virgin territory, but by losing yourself in the precise soundscapes of ‘Red Your Blues’ you’ll rarely want to leave."
Pete Steel (*** 1/2)
Morning Star (Red Your Blues (UK))
"A lo-fi band who feature on a television series 24, a monster hit on both sides of the Atlantic? A US band who can be accepted into the alternative brotherhood without a standout hit?
Picastro are a bag of contradictions and their music is an accomplishment. But is it in spite or because of these paradoxes?
Starting out low and soothing the haunting quality of the stripped down tunes on this, Picastro’s debut, cannot be overemphasised.
Opener Winter Notes is as dreamy and downbeat as the season and Liz Hysen’s vocals are a fantastic understated accompaniment to the steady strum of the guitar.
Highlight is The Sea Will Kill You, but the dark atmosphere of the record needs to be heard as a whole to fully appreciate the brooding blues underlying Liz’s unique sound.
Having played with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the late, great Elliot Smith, Picastro’s cult status is assured - and how.
The strangeness of the songs is their very comfort and the downbeat lyrics and harmonies are their very joy. Picastro and this fabulous album are a challenge indeed, but all the more worthwhile for it."
Kultureflash (Red Your Blues (UK))
"While Dubya's redneck imperialism, Monsanto's glow-in-the-dark rapeseed, and Camp X-Ray's hospitality turn the land of the free into a pariah state, many of its musicians seem to be operating in a sanctified parallel dimension. Last year saw the release of a clutch of brilliant, sensitive (and whatever the opposite of gung-ho is, gung-no?) albums by North American acts as diverse as Rachel's, The Innocence Mission and A Silver Mt. Zion -- records whose very essence seemed to refute the lowest common denominator culture in which they were made. The latter hail from Canada, a country which, when not being written off as terminally boring, is being inaccurately tarred with the poisoned Yankee brush. All of which preamble brings us to Picastro, a multi-instrumentalist sextet from Toronto whose debut album seems duty bound to refute pigeonholing. There's not a band in the UK today prepared to mix things up quite like this bunch of science students, kite-makers and moonlighting Hidden Cameras. Sure, there are precedents -- Godspeed You! Black Emperor and The Dirty Three are the most obvious parallels -- but while, like those tousled precursors, Picastro blend moments of sublime, semi-symphonic lustre (Winter Notes) and alluring guitar chime (The Sea Will Kill You), they also mine their own, unique vein of smouldering disquiet. Whenever Liz Hysen's distracted, subterranean vocals kick in (think Movietone-via-Nico) and Stephanie Vittas's unfettered cello glowers, the sense of personal and, yes, political, discontent is palpable. Protest and survive."
David Sheppard
Ptolemaic Terrascope (Red Your Blues (UK))
"Cryptic songforms from the dark side of the soul with Liz Hysen’s Picastro; a Toronto outfit that have been caught in the past year or so supporting the likes of Godspeed, Cat Power and Smog. Their ‘Red your Blues’ CD has Liz’s often mumblesome vocals mixed almost below the waterline of spindly guitars, violins, sparse drums and the dolorous burr of Rachel McBride’s cello - which, for all intents and purposes is the lead voice. The instrumental ‘Night of the Long Knives’, ‘Meat’, ‘Winter Notes’ and the standout ‘The Sea will Kill You’ are knuckle-gnawingly morose and yet strangely magnetic. There’s a puzzle! – and speaking of puzzles – I’ve been trying to work out the band name/album title – how about Picastro is half Pablo Picasso and half Fidel Castro – and ‘Red your Blues’ can be broken down into Castro’s Red (for communism) and ‘Blues’ for Picasso’s “Blue Period” … so do I win the food hamper?"
All Music Guide (Red Your Blues (USA))
"At the risk of adding to a mountain of rock clichés, Picastro's sound is dark and brooding, and takes its time to unfold. The band is an expansion of an original solo project from Toronto guitarist/vocalist Liz Hysen. Virtually everything revolves around Hysen's fragile vocal parts, and when you listen carefully it becomes pretty apparent that, despite possible comparisons with post-rock darlings like Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Mogwai, Picastro is a much more restrained project, with string accompaniment adding anchor rather than bombast. It's not an album for casual listening, though: Hysen's vocals are so tentative in places that they almost beckon you to get more fully involved in the listening process. It's a beautiful car crash of an album, simultaneously pretty and dissonant, and utterly compelling no matter how jarring it gets. The beautiful minimalist handmade packaging included only adds to the feeling of intimacy."
(4.5/5)
The Big Takeover (Red Your Blues (USA))
"Moody and beautiful, this reminds me at the beginning of a sort of upbeat Dirty Three mixing with a little Cat Power instrumental, a little Molasses dynamic.Then singer Liz Hysen begins...to sing and the Cat Power is stronger, but there is so much more. The songs seem to meander through the intros, then snap into a deeper rhythm that pulls you along like rain-washed train tracks crossing the highways of your dreams. Calexico skies move at shutter speed, the clouds are all at sunset depth. The strings pluck through your veins, uplifting, the guitar flows like wine, fulfilling, the drums beat sparse and solid, living, and the voice is the spirit that ties it all together around your heart."
Time Out New York (Red Your Blues (USA))
"Toronto quarter Picastro's CD 'Rec Your Blues' is proof that a band can slow it down, add strings (cello, in this case), and still keep in mind that a song has to do something and go somewhere (are you listening, Rachel's?). What really makes the band is Liz Hysen's vocals--strong, caramel-textured and anything but ordinary. We just love it when a band comes out of nowhere on us."
Fake Jazz (Red Your Blues (USA))
"Mere minutes into Picastro's Red Your Blues, I was intrigued. The album begins with a quiet guitar and drums, along with cello notes slipping subtly up the scale. This goes on long enough to create some curiosity about what will happen, then the music shifts and becomes a slightly more conventional song, with vocals, guitar, violin, and drums. These four instruments (cello, drums, violin, and guitar) make up Picastro--it's a fairly unique combination for a band, and a good one. The instruments work well together to create the signature mood of the album, a foreboding, intense feeling that is sometimes slightly uncomfortable. Although you could say the majority of the album feels this way, there are many moments on the album that are a bright contrast.
The cello attracts much attention. Rachel McBride makes it slide, picks it cheerfully, or saws it with vigor. The cello is dynamic, and Zak Hanna's guitar work often complements it, since it can be shrill and dissonant or clean and light. I like songs like "No Name," in which these instruments together bring out the sturdiness of the cello and the fragility of the guitars. Evan Clarke's drums, although not heard as often, are nice for some sort of stability in the unsteady music. Liz Hysen's voice often sounds like low mumbling. The first time I listened to Red Your Blues I wasn't sure what to think, but now I can't imagine another style of singing I would prefer on the album.
Actually, Red Your Blues is a lot like Liz's voice. It may take some getting used to if you are used to pretty pop or if you are expecting it from this album. Get ready for songs like "Night of Long Knives," a track of sound made with stringed instruments but actually sounds like some sort of strange machinery; or "Five Cent Church," which varies from discordant and noisy to eerily calm and which conjures images of creaky houses and shadowy corners. Don't be afraid, though, the strange but beautiful mix of instruments and sounds on Red Your Blues just might intrigue you enough to venture there."
Nor-Easter Zine (Red Your Blues (USA))
"I have just been struck upside the head by a velvet hammer. My lord, this is one of the most beautiful, dark offerings I have heard in some time. Picastro play a shadowy, almost lurking, but yet melancholy brand of acoustic guitar driven music that is loaded with texture and a distinctly unique graceful punch. Vocalist and guitarist Liz Hysen has created the soundtrack to running away from your problems via a potentially tragic drive alone down on dark country road on a cold and rainy November night. Hysen's soothing vocals, that whisper and gasp with complimenting piano and string tracks, at times sound like a creaking old house on a windy night, or an old sailing ship rolling atop the sea. Red Your Blues, much like Picastro's live performance, commands your undivided attention and never gives your ears the opportunity to stray. You hang on for every word, every note, until it consumes you as you crave more. Sheer brilliance!"
Mundane Sounds (Red Your Blues (USA))
"Moody, atmospheric music often makes me smile. Picastro is a new group that you've probably unknowingly heard. Led by one Liz Hysen, this Canadian group has a deep, impressive ability to mix atmosphere with melancholy. Surpising, then, that Red Your Blues is only Picastro's debut record, for their mastery of the genre would lead you to think that Picastro's been around for quite some time.
If the lead track, "Winter Notes," sounds oddly familiar, it's because it has been used on the soundtrack of the hit television show 24. Of course, "Winter Notes" sets the tone for the rest of the album, and by knowing the simple fact that it was used as soundtrack music, I can't help but think of the rest of the album in the context of soundtracks. I'm thinkin' darkness here; this is a post-X-Files world we're living in, and Picastro's got the skills to make that dark, haunting music, one filled with haunting, morose strings and heartbeat-pulsed drum beats. In fact, listening to this at night makes me a little nervous, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's Hysen's sultry, sinister singing that has me on edge. Maybe it's those spiderweb-like acoustic guitar lines.
Picastro are the new house band in the coffee house for the absynthe set. Hysen is most assuredly going to join such luminaries as Chan Marshall, Shannon Wright, Sue Garner, and Tara Jane O'Neil in the Dark Folk world. Red Your Blues isn't going to make you feel better, isn't going to uplift you, and it isn't going to cure your blues. Why would you want to, when misery sounds this lovely?"
Now (Red Your Blues (USA))
"Picastro's darkly moody, orchestral soundscapes echo everything from the Nico-fronted Velvets and the depressingly stark songs of Smog to Cat Power"
Burning Link (Red Your Blues (USA))
"dark, brooding and introspective... sultry and sad... jarring and hypnotic"
Chart (Red Your Blues (USA))
"Sitting somewhere between Cat Power and seasonal depression, Picastro present an emotion far more exhausting than sadness, perfectly spoken through wavering strings and fragile instrumentation."
Yale Herald (Red Your Blues (USA))
"the most exquisite melancholy this side of Disintegration... a rich symphony of despair... flawless"
Sodapop (Red Your Blues (USA))
"where post rock meets symphonic (a là Rachel' s or Shannon Wright) … melancholy pervades every note, and if the melodies seem made to melt your hearts, the dissonances will surely crush your cardiac muscle ... just in time for the winter"
Aquarius Records (Red Your Blues (USA))
"A lovely collection of shadowy melancholia... slightly drowsy, slightly brittle… haunting"
Wavelength (Red Your Blues (USA))
"heart wrenching"
Mote (Red Your Blues (USA))
"part hypnosis, part overture"
DOA (Red Your Blues (USA))
"like those occasional moments that Smog, Dirty Three, or the For Carnation have played... a surprisingly strong and profound work"
The Space (Red Your Blues (USA))
"it’s rare to stumble upon anything this simultaneously beautiful and crippling...this album is dangerously great, perfect for the approaching winter."
The Province (Red Your Blues (USA))
"A kindred spirit to both Cat Power and Beth Orton... moody, modern rebetica."