PALE BLUE EYES + DBCOOPER – DUST, BRIGHTON 11.4.25
I would honestly go so far to say that Pale Blue Eyes are the nicest people in the cut-throat music business! They are really genuine people who are grounded and down to earth and really appreciate this evening’s punters filling the Dust venue to its capacity and thus assisting in keeping grassroots music and venues alive. We get thanked on a few occasions during their 69 minute 13 track set which ran from 8:50pm to 9:59pm. Curfew being 10pm, but I’m sure if allowed they would play for longer. As it is, they were earlier on in the day scheduled to grace the compact stage at 9pm, but they changed this to ten minutes earlier, which is refreshing to hear.
Born of a cross-pollination between Totnes in Devon and Sheffield, Pale Blue Eyes have been steadily grafting over a number of years to exact their modernist pop vision. At the ship’s helm, Matt and Lucy Board are a genuine marriage of two stylistic perspectives, each bringing unique sonic tropes to the table. It is the pair’s fascination with DIY ethic, retro synths and reminiscence that truly fuels their sound world, calling upon nostalgia and a captivating optimism.
The third part of the Pale Blue Eyes triad arrived when Matt and Lucy met bassist Aubrey Simpson at South Devon’s Sea Change festival. Along the way they utilized the services of the energetic John Gooding on synths, tambourine, shakers and guitar, but he has, I hear, gone back to college and so the trio have called on the services of new boy Lewis Johnson-Kellett on synths and guitar duty. Matt is very much the frontman of the unit and the one that stands centre stage and addresses the crowd. When he speaks of his joy of being able to play for us it’s genuine. In fact every time they have played live in Brighton, it’s always been a perfect match of chemistry between the band and the audience and so this means that our city has a special place within their hearts. In fact, when they were looking at moving away from Devon, Brighton was almost selected, but Sheffield won on account of Lucy having close family there.
Pale Blue Eyes have thus far dropped a trio of top-quality long players, with songs from these having been playlisted at BBC Radio 6 Music, where they have played two Marc Riley sessions. They have toured extensively in the UK and Europe, and have supported GOAT, Slowdive, Sea Power, The Editors, Public Service Broadcasting, FEWS and more. Their debut album ‘Souvenirs’ dropped on 2nd September 2022, and was followed by ‘This House’ on 1st September 2023, and their newbie came out on 7th March this year. This is titled ‘New Place’ and has come out on their own imprint, Broadcast Recordings. As with the first two albums the record has been produced by the band and final mixed and mastered by Dean Honer. Honer has produced the likes of The Human League, Add N to (x) and Roisin Murphy and worked with countless Sheffield names from Jarvis Cocker to Tony Christie.
In support of the new album, Pale Blue Eyes announced an eleven date UK tour this month which commenced at Thekla in Bristol on 3rd April. After which, they thrilled crowds in Leeds, Glasgow, Nottingham, Birmingham and Manchester, before arriving here in Brighton for their gig at Dust courtesy of FORM promoters. After this evening, the quartet will be heading to Exeter, Bedford, Oxford and finally London on 17th April.
This evening at Dust, the room has a positive vibe right from the very start as we arrive and is even more so as we vacate the venue at the end of the night. Pale Blue Eyes take to the stage with beaming smiles at 8:50pm and Matt immediately says “It’s so great to be back in Brighton, we love it here!”. It’s obvious that he isn’t giving us lip service, but it’s from the heart. They open with the first of a handful of tracks from their latest ‘New Place’ LP, this being ‘Scrolling’, which immediately has that wonderful guitar echo sound which isn’t far off David Bowie’s “Heroes” which isn’t surprising considering the amount of foot pedals on offer. The metronomic backbeat is from the Neu! catalogue and the vocals have a melodic ‘Madchester’ feeling and overall the combined sound isn’t that far off Stereolab meets Slowdive. The only complaint here is that Lewis’ keys are slightly down in the mix, but I can live with it.
Song two is ‘TV Flicker’ from 2022’s ‘Souvenirs’ album and we are all hooked from the first few lines: “Running away with itself; Mind is running; Running away with itself; True reflection; TV Flicker; REM…”. This is metronomic again courtesy of Lucy’s drumming and there’s A Flock Of Seagulls ‘I Ran’ feel to this tune. ‘Rituals’ from the new record is next. This benefits from more supreme shoegaze fuzz and lashings of reverb on the guitars. I’m stationed at the very front and it’s interesting to watch Matt continually tapping each button on the foot pedals in order to change the sound. ‘Honeybear’ from their ‘Souvenirs’ album is next. This has a slow intro strum and a tune to float away with as opposed to totally psyching out. Next up is ‘Under Northern Sky’ from the same album. I notice Matt’s vocals are similar to Jon Anderson from Yes, as in ‘Wonderous Stories’ and there’s a twangy guitar vibe going on here as well, a tad like The Shadows. There’s more metronomic backing here and as per usual Aubrey’s neck is constantly on the go to the beat.
‘The Dreamer’ from their ‘New Place’ album is the next choice and is a less immediate number, but still benefits from that jangly guitar sound and swirling rhythms. Matt’s vocals are delivered in a slow fashion which is almost slower than the beat, but it’s meant to be that way. Tune seven is the catchy earworm ‘More’ (“You give me more and more”) which is found on their ‘This House’ album and Matt’s vocals this time give me an indication of The Beach Boys and there’s some perfect jaggedy guitar sounds going on here which are achieved by Matt tapping a oval shaped silver foot-pedal. This more than any other of their tracks reminds me of the criminally underrated former Sussex based Kraftwerk-esque quartet of Mirrors. Do yourself a favour and check out their Skint Records released album ‘Lights And Offerings’ which although was released back in 2011, it still remained my favourite album of that whole decade!
It’s the best song of the whole set for yours truly next, with the arrival of their 2021 ‘Motionless’ single. There’s some fabulous guitarwork going on here like Neu! and it also has the trippy psychedelic vibe achieved by The Beatles, especially on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ from their ‘Revolver’ album. ‘Motionless’ is a masterpiece and I believe it’s the longest tune of this evening’s set, which helps with the trippiness of the whole feeling and it gave me the tingles! It’s quite possibly the best live song I’ve heard this year!
‘Our History’ from 2023’s ‘This House’ album is up next and this has the trippy vibe akin to ‘The Only One I Know’ by The Charlatans, but this is a tad faster. It also has a false ending which catches a few punters out. ‘Our Lost Words’ from ‘New Place’ is next and this has a slow intro with an unusual backing, maybe something that you would have expected to have been culled from OMD’s ‘Dazzle Ships’ album. Even Matt’s vocals aren’t that far off Paul Humpreys here, and it’s a delicate tune. ‘Chelsea’ from ‘Souvenirs’ is up next and this too is a delicate number with enjoyable electronic backing, which I think comes from Lucy’s Roland digital sampling unit. But then it’s all change and half way through it bursts into action and now has that trademark Pale Blue Eyes shoegaze sound like Slowdive.
Their penultimate choice is ‘Sister’ from ‘This House’ and this is arguably in the same mould as Stereolab’s ‘French Disco’, on account of its great whirring Korg keys sequences from Lewis. The quartet signed off with ‘Half Light’ from ‘New Place’ which has a twangy cowboy style guitar sound and is not that far away from sounding like The Smiths, and in particular ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’. It’s different sounding from their other material, but it’s a great way to end a truly splendid set.
Keep your eyes and ears open as Pale Blue Eyes might be returning sooner than you think!!!
Pale Blue Eyes:
Matthew Board – lead vocals, Fender Jaguar guitars,
Lucy Board – drums, Roland presets, backing vocals, shakers, tambourine
Aubrey Simpson – Fender Precision bass
Lewis Johnson-Kellett – Korg synth, Yamaha Reface YC synth, guitar, backing vocals
Pale Blue Eyes setlist:
‘Scrolling’ (from 2025 ‘New Place’ album)
‘TV Flicker’ (from 2022 ‘Souvenirs’ album)
‘Rituals’ (from 2025 ‘New Place’ album)
‘Honeybear’ (from 2022 ‘Souvenirs’ album)
‘Under Northern Sky’ (from 2022 ‘Souvenirs’ album)
‘The Dreamer’ (from 2025 ‘New Place’ album)
‘More’ (from 2023 ‘This House’ album)
‘Motionless’ (from 2021 ‘Motionless’ / ‘Chelsea’ single)
‘Our History’ (from 2023 ‘This House’ album)
‘Our Lost Words’ (from 2025 ‘New Place’ album)
‘Chelsea’ (from 2022 ‘Souvenirs’ album)
‘Sister’ (from 2023 ‘This House’ album)
‘Half Light’ (from 2025 ‘New Place’ album)
Support this evening came from new local quartet DBCooper (stylized as dbcooper) who comprise Harvey Dent (Squier guitar and lead vocals), Bailey Kent (Squier Jaguar lead guitar), Georgia Butler (Fender Jazz bass and vocals) and Hannah Websdale (drums). Some of the members are already well known on the local scene, especially Hannah who is also the drummer for Currls, as well as Georgia who is also the vocalist and guitarist for Ladylike. It’s possible they got their name after the guy that was infamously known for hijacking a Boeing 727 and parachuting from the plane midflight on 24th November 1971, only never to be heard of again.
Tonight dbcooper performed a half dozen newly penned unreleased songs for us across a 21 minute set, which ran from 7:59pm to 8:20pm. The first thing everybody can’t fail to notice is that Harvey has very gingerly taken to the stage with the aid of a crutch and is playing his instrument in a seated position. He informs us that he had knee surgery a week ago which must still hurt a great deal, so hats off to him for going ahead with this evening’s performance.
Tonight is my second encounter with dbcooper, having witnessed their performance on 12th March at The Prince Albert, which was actually their second ever gig. Not surprisingly, the set this evening is exactly the same and they commence with a brief instrumental warm up tune aptly called ‘Intro’ and this very much lets the punters know what is going to be on offer throughout the rest of the performance, namely fuzzy guitar shoegaze which isn’t that far away from the sound of Slowdive.
Harvey takes lead vocals for ‘John Mullaney’s Divorce’ which initially begins at a slow melodic pace which then at times explodes into a reverb drenched fuzzy guitar and heavy bass notes sound. Georgia initially takes over the lead vocals role on the dreamy track three which is called ‘Joker 500’ and then Harvey takes the lead and they alternate throughout the track which erupts with copious amounts of shoegaze energy and harmonies. Harvey is back on lead vocals for ‘Lucy Goosey’ which commences with a melodic strumming vibe which then like virtually all of their material, gains in substance the longer the tune plays for. Harvey’s vocals are almost straying into Oasis and Stone Roses territory during this track.
Their penultimate selection is called ‘Underwater’ and Georgia is up first on the vocals and then it’s over to Harvey. This is another slab of dreaminess which grows in intensity and the punter’s head bobbing increases throughout the song. Bailey seriously comes into their own here with some notable guitar action. They close their all-too-short set with ‘Cowboy Moustache’ with Harvey on the lead. The track changes beat and intensity throughout culminating in a crescendo. It’s not a long tune, but it’s a good one.
dbcooper are an act I’m certain that you are going to be hearing more of across the coming months!
DBCooper:
Bailey Kent – lead guitar
Harvey Dent – guitar, lead vocals
Hannah Websdale – drums
Georgia Butler – bass, vocals
DBCooper setlist:
‘Intro’ (unreleased)
‘John Mullaney’s Divorce’ (unreleased)
‘Joker 500’ (unreleased)
‘Lucy Goosey’ (unreleased)
‘Underwater’ (unreleased)
‘Cowboy Moustache’ (unreleased)
www.instagram.com/whereisdbcooper
