The year is almost over and I’m clearing the deck of all the stuff I have left over to review. The CD must have fallen thru the cracks’ so to speak as it was released in early May, although I didn’t receive it until much later in the year. The Project Pale is actually the brainchild of Glitch (Jason Selden) from the D’n’B outfit The Chosen. Well, D’n’B it certainly ain’t. Glitch straps on guitar for this venture which eschews drumn’bass for a heavily shoegazer-influenced sound. He’s assisted by Ohm Resistance label-owner (Kurt) Submerged on bass and Sensi*star (Phillia Kim Downs) lending vocals to a few tracks. To top it off, Bill Laswell produced. Well, that was a surprise.

I used to love shoegazer bands. I even still listen to some of them occasionally. Lush, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and so many others created a genre of music that a certain enchantment and mystery to it. As for what we have here, there is no doubt The Project Pale is shoegazer-influenced, but I wouldn’t exactly call it shoegazer music’. The album opens up well enough with "Driving These Icy Roads," an atmospheric MBV inspired number with mountains of shimmering distorted guitar, a driving beat and ethereal wordless vocals that recall the Cocteau’s Liz Frasier. Even though it really doesn’t go anywhere, it sounds petty cool and sets a nice tone. Good intro. The following track, "Snowed In" begins with cool ambience and echoed clacks then after nearly a minute becomes a brooding tribute to early Ride and Jesus & Mary Chain. Brief track "It’s Not That I’m Uncomfortable" plays with prog-rock but really only has one trick up its sleeve. "Cleopatra’s Needle" mines the low end of the spectrum with bassy menace then ends up sounding like so many, many noisy alternative bands without bringing anything new to the table except some whistling sounds. Not even any vocals on that track. Now I’m beginning to see what’s going on here; there are a lot of ideas put forth, but they don’t seem complete. Too many tracks opens with some type of drone ambience. Also, the production has the guitar pushed way up and the drums sound squashed. This is beginning to sound like... a demo. And not a great demo either.

Vocals return in "Pulled Out to Sea" plenty gloomy, angst-ridden ones at that. The music has definitely settled into a heavy snail’s pace crawl, and "Another Day Without" continues in that vein. There are some sort of vocals wallowing in the swath of echo-verb but they seem more for effect than having anything to say. If you like songs totally obscured by dark clouds, you might enjoy this. "With Open Arms" begins with more melancholy atmospherics before it lurches into another plodding number with electronically treated vocals. I’ll give the Project Pale this much; there is certainly plenty of style in the shoegazer/noise mode; it just lacks substance. There is nothing to anchor the music to keep it from sliding down the drain of self-indulgence. For that, I blame Laswell. Yes, the man of a thousand albums, with a discography the size of a telephone book must have been out to lunch for this project.

"No Help Coming" is an aptly titled track, because there isn’t any. Oh wow, a heavy guitar riff with a ripping synth playing off it. Kind of sounds like a bad live recording. It just builds and builds in a repetitive progression until the end. By the time we reach the title track, I’ve had enough. There is little to save this exercise in excess. It started out as a good idea, but somewhere along the line Jason got so absorbed in the shoegazer sound, he forgot to develop the material into actual songs. Dude, you’ve got to give people something they can emotionally hold on to, some lyrics that can be understood. Maybe if hooked up with a real songwriter, he might have something, but as is, this sounds half-baked. And Bill Laswell, it’s hard to believe you had a hand in this. It could have been a halfway decent album if it had been given some direction, tempering, and sound advice. At least the CD cover looks kinda cool; but I learned a long time ago to never judge an album by its cover.