Crushingly loud and with a sparkling intensity, the pink opaque (all lowercase – it’s intentional) is one of Ōtepoti’s most sonically lush bands – their swirling guitars and blown out layers of fuzz a force to behold live. Critic Te Ārohi met with Kim (she/her), their singer/songwriter and guitarist, on a wonderfully dark and overcast day to talk about the two luminously heavy singles the band has just released, and about Kim’s inspirations.
The project was originally themed around concepts of the ‘expressions of gender’ – starting out from the perspective of a closeted non-binary person. This has developed into songs about being a trans youth in the modern day, among other things. While a lot of the songs have shifted away from this slightly, these themes remain apparent in Kim’s work, with the name of the band itself being a reference to the film ‘I Saw the TV Glow’: a “very scary” movie very much about identity (and also a reference to the Cocteau Twins compilation of the same name).
Stylistically the band draws a lot of inspiration from shoegaze old and new, especially of the glittering and gliding variety – Kim quotes bands like Swirlies, Slowdive, and my bloody valentine – and they also draw from New York no wave like Sonic Youth, and staples of alternative music like Pavement and the Velvet Underground. On the newer side of things, Kim says that she loves how the band julie (also all lowercase – it’s a shoegaze thing) consider their aesthetics just as important as the music, and the pink opaque have cultivated their own very intentional design style. She says that seeing bands around the same age as her getting successful making stuff that she really likes is cool, and this is undoubtedly an aspiration of hers for the project.
The band recently released two singles, glow/sparkle, and played a Radio One-backed single release show gig at Pearl Diver with their friends to celebrate. They also played the first night of Dankfest (a yearly festival of music on the heavier side of things) a few weeks back: a blisteringly loud set performed to an enraptured audience. Indeed, most of their gigs are very very loud – they play music that feels like getting hit with a brilliantly metallic brick wall that you can just stand there and absorb. It’s music that sounds like the name – if music was ever dense enough to be opaque, and visually interrupted by a hot pink guitar lead glowing neon on a dark stage, this is it.
sparkle was originally written for another of Kim’s bands while she was still living in Auckland, but she ended up bringing it to her new bandmates (Zac, Stefan, and Caleb, on drums, bass, and guitar respectively) in Dunedin, while glow was the first song that they all worked on together. Both songs have been very well-received, shining on the Aotearoa alternative music charts.
Kim has a lot of love for Dunedin music and her friends within the scene, but in the long term she’s dreaming bigger. She has plans to move to New York and make music there, and already has musical connections – glow/sparkle was mastered by the guitarist from the band Shower Curtain, another influence on the band. She says that she doesn’t think of the pink opaque as being confined to the Dunedin scene, or defined by being a Dunedin band, even though it’s a community that she is really passionate about. Stylistically they are a little set apart from many of their peers – pretty much no one else in this city is making shoegaze with the same intensity as the pink opaque.
The band already has more music recorded, which hopefully we will get to hear (all in good time of course). Kim says she’s always going to be making music, and that the band is still focusing on writing and recording even more. In the meantime, try to catch them live somewhere in Ōtepoti.
Find the pink opaque on bandcamp or streaming, and on instagram @thepinkopaque_band to find out about upcoming shows. Their next show is Rock the Vote on October 3rd.
