The Pica Beats

The Pica Beats (pronounced pie-ka) is originally and intermittently a solo project of Ryan Barrett. Ryan grew up back east mucking about in the woods of Vermont, gradually forgoing the wide open outdoors for grimy basements and stupidly fast punk rock songs. Years and various bands (and a handful of instruments) later, he ended up in Seattle, releasing folkish pop sort of records All Mysteries Solve Themselves (2007, self-released), and Beating Back The Claws of the Cold (2008, hardly art). For the current record, Better In Color (2011, self-released), sitar has been replaced with synth, and acoustic guitars have been replaced with no acoustic guitars. Aiming for a more sharp and streamlined approach, Ryan wrote the songs for this record with live performance in mind, hoping folks will just sort of be there and feel it, and save the lyrical analysis for when they get home and sober up. Lyrically speaking though, it’s probably just as dense and gloomy as always, but maybe it’s possible to discover hope via discussions of hopelessness, or something. Joining him on Better In Color and for live performance, is Alice Sandal on vocals and miscellaneous percussion, Marian Li-Pino ... more...