The alienation that makes one unable to react, the inertia as poison in a society that mixes everything and absorbs nothing, and the silence evoked as a lifeline and the only form of resistance in a highly toxic world. These are the thematic parameters that outline the moods and anxieties at the center of “Comfort In The Silence”, starting from the launch single of Pinhdar's new album, “Mute”, which rests, coincidentally, on the strength of silence as a screen for everything, for a song with the typical darkwave sounds so dear to the Milanese duo composed of the singer Cecilia Miradoli and the guitarist/producer Max Tarenzi, who are joined for the occasion by Lee Pomeroy, bassist of the Archive.
“Comfort In The Silence” contains nine songs that travel through the darkness in a desperate search for a crack through which to let a glimmer of light pass through, an equally explanatory attitude of Pinhdar. In this round the duo plays their cards by emancipating the sound, gradually filling it with rhythms wave dark and carefully lopsided as in “Neon Light”, while Mirandoli's voice becomes even more penetrating, concise, evocative of a state of mind as afflicted as it is longing for life.
The chiaroscuro are in fact the matrix of a very melodically calibrated work, with some desert-rock hooks (“Fade”) that add further spice to the harmonic textures.
Of course, the glue remains the inclination towards the darkwave of the 80s, reinterpreted however with a contemporary twist and with a decidedly personal vision, as for example in the trip-hop step of “We Float”, another moment of sidereal emotional perdition, capable of leading the listener into an unspecified, yet enveloping limbo, or in the ghostly “Old Kind”.
In this succession of roller coasters traveled in low lights, “RED” stands out very high (present only in the physical version on CD or vinyl), written strictly in capital letters, or capslockif you prefer, whose video – produced by the Milanese Blackball and directed by Matteo Magi – is a gem shot entirely in Morocco, while the music in the wake of Depeche Mode supports the duel between the protagonists, the actors Alessio Bettarello and Mirko Frigerio, one dressed in white and the other in black, to symbolize an endemic dualism.
With “Comfort In The Silence”, Pinhdar confirm themselves as masters of a vibrant darkwave, in a collective scenario that is on average increasingly desolate and at times mostly cloying. Which is kind of a godsend, sorry: from the bottom.
06/18/2026
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
