On their third release, Sheffield, UK’s Pale Blue Eyes create music that’s a blend of woozy synthesizers, sharp guitars, raw drumming, and weightless vocals, that combined, have the spunk of post punk, the psychedelia of the era that preceded it, and the dreaminess of the ethereal scene that emerged from it. 
A New Place brilliantly combines fieriness, dreaminess, and eccentricity in a package that sounds offbeat as well as enticing. Co-songwriter / co-producer Lucy Board’s brisk drumming has a sense of raw energy, while her robotic analogue synths have a surreal krautrock appeal. Lucy’s other half (as well as the other half of Pale Blue Eyes’ songwriting and producing duo) Matthew Board’s guitars add just enough noise under the shadows of her synthesizers to ground the psychedelia. On the other hand, his airy vocals add an element of dream pop, levitating the entire musical arrangement.
There is innocence and sweetness in Board’s vocals, which offer a warm counterbalance to the majority of the album’s spacey and frigid post-punk songs. But on the few numbers where the album dives into the belly of the world of dream pop (like “Pieces Of You” and “The Dreamer,” with their unmistakable classic shimmery guitars), Board’s vocals not only compliment the sweetness in the music, but make it shine.
A New Place has some nice surprises like the tenderly lulling clarinets on “Seven Years” that pop out of nowhere; or, the group bringing a whole new guest singer, Rachael Swinton, on the album’s most ethereal and sparkly track “Be There,” because her voice is so much more brisk and angelic than Board’s and so much more fitting for this music. Maybe this is Pale Blue Eyes’ way of saying that they are not a dream pop outfit. They are their own thing, with a unique pairing of Lucy’s quirky synthesizer sounds and Matthew’s innocent vocals, creating their version of music for the introspective weirdos that gravitate toward dream pop.