New Pagans are back; to shine a light in the night of our collective near 6 month stint in Covid misery, with new single, ‘Yellow Room’. Coming off the back of their latest EP, Glacial Erratic, it’s a powerful rocker dripping with sincerity, new romance and punky goth rock flair. New Pagans are cool and once again, their songs continue to be too damn infectious.
‘Yellow Room’, deals with a darkness and worry often shunned and treated as taboo; the lonely abyss of postnatal depression and the struggles of motherhood. It may be bleak in subject matter but it brings to life the uncomfortableness through suitably good old fashioned energy, unbelievable attitude and positive vitality. The songwriting here works, precisely because it is so good. Only a band like New Pagans, have the impetus and inspiration to send a subject matter, so often muted, blasting straight through the speaker and straight into the back of your brain.
As a follow up to everything that’s come before, ‘Yellow Room’ is an appropriate note to return on. It is somewhat exhausted and emotional in atmosphere, yet always successful in switching up between restrained pace and pummelling passion, full to the brim with bite. Based on gothic horror story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilmore, the song perfectly encapsulates both the fear of that story and the intimate lyricism of singer, Lyndsey McDougall; like a peek inside the minds of worried mothers everywhere. The song is a poignant spotlight on the need for a dedicated parent and baby mental health unit here in Northern Ireland.
New Pagans are cementing their legendary status with every release, scratching, gouging and splintering their way into the psyche. ‘Yellow Room’ is a monstrously apt accomplice to the short story it’s inspired by and will no doubt convert your friends with it’s sickly, bizarre and disturbingly ghostly melody.
