Comprised of longtime buds Joey Doubek and Ashley Arnwine, who collaborated previously in DC’s Mass Movement of the Moth and punk duo Ingrid, Pinkwash is the sound of two musicians lashing out with everything they’ve got, with no hope of achieving anything beyond their own righteous fury.
But the duo’s full-length debut, Collective Sigh, is more than just sound and fury. There’s also a pulsing orb of grief radiating outward from the band’s center, owing to Doubek’s experience of being the primary caregiver to a mother who died of breast cancer in 2009. Each of the 10 songs on Pinkwash’s debut is a vessel for that grief, and none evinces any semblance of acceptance. From the screeching noise that announces opening track “No Real Witness” to the thundering riffs that…
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…stretch across “Metastatic” to the creeping bass of “Sigh”, these guys make clear that they will not go gently into that good night. There are some things in life that simple can’t be helped or fought, but Pinkwash takes an alternate approach: Beat them down until they bleed.
“To me, Collective Sigh is a record about coping,” Doubek says. “Coping with loss, with pain, and with bodily existence. The Sigh is coping in short form. It’s the space in between grasping difficulty and moving forward. Pain is universal, so this is my reminder to not become numb to the world around me.”