Pale Saints – Slow Buildings

Finally a reissue! Slow Buildings (30th Anniversary Edition)
2 LP Petrol Green Vinyl, April 12 2025 Record store day!

Slow Buildings is the first PS album i've heard and loved it the most, although the previous albums are good too, but those Ian purists made them like the holy relic just lmao.

4ad is about to repress In Ribbons i hope they repress Slow Buildings they should it's the last one

Being an Ian Masters Pale Saints purist must be a special place to live, I gotta get there someday. On the ride over I'll be listening to Slow Buildings and loving every minute of it.

This album is a masterpiece. Just missing the "Parla!" in the end.

As their third and final album, Slow Buildings is a fine one. It might be too slick and over-produced in parts. They should have kept going as a band after its year of release, but there's no arguing with business and finance -- not to mention the (often stupid) traditionalism of early audience converts who later began dissing the band. I won't say that Slow Buildings tops what they did before. However, it's my favorite of their three albums (especially the song Fine Friend).

No, I did not know about them until just before they stopped. No one I knew back then had ever talked about Pale Saints. Then eventually I got to see them play live, opening for Cranes in November of 1994. I was a student living in Florence, and the small venue was on the outskirts of town. They came on stage unadorned, cast in white light, and proceeded to play amazing rock music with no trace of pretension or ego. As a live act, they were capable of bringing an astonishing amount to the table........ lively energy, charisma, strong unity, and great musicianship (they rocked hard with glee). Then there was Meriel's beautiful voice, and consistent songs that were really hooky. I took in their whole set with a beginner's mind, and loved it. I did't think many of the Italians in the audience knew Pale Saints any better than I did that night. (They liked what they saw.) Later I got to chat with Colleen (Ian's bass-playing replacement) after the show. She told me to buy this album.

At nearly an hour's length, I'm surprised to find here that Slow Buildings has never been published as a double album. Initially, I was turned off when I first heard it. King Fade, the first track, is far from being a winner. Yet, without a doubt, the rest of the album reveals the live prowess that they had........ which can only have been increasing through the years. Much later I realized the set list I witnessed in Tuscany consisted of mostly that material, plus Sight of You and two from the In Ribbons period. As I recall, it resembled the one from this bootleg: http://discogs.cinepelis.org/Pale-Saints-Live-In-Philadelphia-Fall-1994/release/5479409

My supposition for the live experience of Ian with his mates is that it stunned a lot of people (in the UK). In the recordings however, it seems to me that a certain cynicism, however attractive coming from him, got replaced in the end with an earnestness that didn't sell. Slow Buildings is a heartfelt album with a heavy edge. It's not dissonant or ironic, overall. The band might have been able to win newer fans in the rock business by playing it live, but didn't -- besides me, I guess. They disappeared shortly thereafter, but not before playing one of my favorite concerts.

Maybe this album will get its critical due.

Good piece of rubbish. No Ian Masters= no Pale Saints.

Slow Buildings is an odd one to throw away. Anyone revisiting the complete Pale Saints Discography will maybe notice a little bit missing from this album.

However much Ian Master purists might scoff this album as a waste; it was however one of my most cherished. If you look at the credits on previous Pale Saint's records, it does not say Ian Masters; it says Pale Saints. This band is a collective of creative musicians, and it lost and important original member, yet did not fail to impress me. This album has some of my favourite Meriel Barham vocals. The lyrics are fantastic, and it seems that each song uniquely es on to the next, and there is something gracious and original about each song. Just the transition from the dark emotional song Henry into the catchy fuzzy-poppy Under Your Nose, was a whole level of bliss to me. Some of Slow Buildings stronger songs are the heart pounding get away song, Angel (Will You Be My), To the lengthy droney masterpiece Henry, to Slow Buildings final song, Suggestion, which turns off the light of the career and discography of Bliss rocks quickly forgotten band.

There is one final song that I must comment on in closing. That song is Fine Friend. Going back and listening to every Pale Saint album, this is the best song they have ever written (and by best I mean like Ride - Vapour Trail, excellent). What this shows to me was that Masters wasn't the only talent in the band, and the replacements had lots of fresh ideas that never got into the ears of the fans of apparently one musician out of a collective.

Slow Buildings, the third album from Pale Saints, suffered enormously from the loss of bassist and vocalist Ian Masters. Masters was also apparently the primary songwriter; without him, the band descends into generic mediocrity.

Edited 2/22/2020:

I'm not saying this because I am a purist, or traditionalist, or that I think that Ian Masters did everything in this band up until his departure. I'm saying it because the music produced when Ian Masters was in the band was high quality, and when he left, that ended. I'd be pleased as punch if this record lived up to that legacy. What reasonable person wants a bad record instead of a good one?

Listening to the new repress of "The Comforts of Madness," I'm reminded once again that "Slow Buildings" not only doesn't measure up, it doesn't come close.