Pillow Queens: Leave the Light On – An astounding leap forward

We leave lights on for security and clarity, to ward off the fear of not being able to see things that go bump in the night or to guide us on our way to somewhere. When Dublin-based band Pillow Queens quote American writer Maggie Nelson from her 2009 book of prose poems, Bluets ("All right then, let me try to rephrase. When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing but of light"), they pinpoint in many relevant ways their route from little scrappers to top dogs – with a side order of uncertainty, vulnerability, uneasiness and resignation along the way.

Nelson herself describes Bluets as her way of “making my life feel ‘in progress’ rather than a sleeve of ash falling off a lit cigarette”, and there are many examples in her book of what Pillow Queens are aiming for with Leave the Light On (but perhaps none more pertinent than “mostly I have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. I am still looking for beauty in that”).

Five years after they formed, and with a profile that has risen to the point where they have twice been guests on James Corden's US coast-to-coast Late Late Show, Pillow Queens transform as a unit and people here. If they haven't found what they're looking for, then they are certainly very close to it. While their 2020 debut album, In Waiting, introduced them as a sure-fire-hit act ("With the added queer lens," noted this paper's review, "In Waiting is a lifeline for people who haven't yet found their tribe"), Leave the Light On sees the band deliver songs that jump from breakthrough to heartbreak, from excitement to exorcism.

While the lyrics ably illustrate blurred lines drawn between honesty, intimacy and emotional exploration (“I wanna feel the blood rushing straight to my head, I wanna feel like a dog with a bone to be led, and I wanna feel every pulse to the shake in your leg” from Be By Your Side is particularly forthright), the musical advances are skilfully defined. From the none-more-forceful pop-rock of The Wedding Band, Hearts & Minds, My Body Moves and Try Try Try to the beach hammock sway of House that Sailed Away, the jagged lucidity of Well Kept Wife, and the guitar-swirling psych-ballad Historian, it’s clear that the phrase “leaps and bounds” is an understatement in the context of just how far Pillow Queens have come in terms of their songwriting.

“Love is not consolation. It is light,” writes Nelson in Bluets. Throughout a triumphant second album, Pillow Queens tenderly and ferociously acknowledge that.