Out today: PICASTRO - Exit

Picastro's new album, Exit, is out now on Sleeping Giant Glossolalia.

Founded in the late '90s, Picastro is led by Toronto-based songwriter Liz Hysen. For new album Exit, Hysen enlisted guests – Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and Great Lake Swimmer's Tony Dekker, among others – to sing her "hushed, spectral" songs.

Sleeping Giant Glossolalia continues to carve its awesome, strange path – uniting diverse sounds under one banner. 2019 has seen new albums by Unnatural Ways, Skryptor, and Picastro, and the debut by Nastie Band approaches.

Listen and buy, here:
https://sleepinggiantglossolalia.bandcamp.com/album/picastro-exit

"In the late 1990s, Toronto musician Liz Hysen began to use the alias Picastro to distance herself from assumptions about singing-and-songwriting women at the dawn of the Lilith Fair era. Hysen’s hushed, spectral songs tapped more into the stewing undercurrents of slowcore and post-rock than traditional folk, anyway. On the appropriately titled Exit, Picastro’s first album in five years, she largely steps away from the microphone to let others do the singing. And instead of simply applying their voices to Hysen’s songs, the singers push their personalities to eccentric extremes, driving Picastro toward their most tumultuous, unpredictable, and deviously playful music to date... Each singer makes the songs their own, like a parade of guests taking turns house-sitting the same abode and rearranging the furniture to their liking... Where Picastro was once a means for Hysen to sidestep stereotypes, with Exit, she’s now successfully redefined what it means to be Picastro at all."
–Pitchfork

"On their newest album, and first in five years, Picastro have subverted folk and popular music expectations. Led by songwriter, guitarist and vocalist Liz Hysen, the Toronto-based group toys with the notions of genre and the composition of a musical group. For one, the music is too dark, complex and bombastic to be pigeonholed in a single category, be it folk, rock or something in between. Additionally, Hysen — who normally plays the role of lead vocalist — has chosen a cabal of mostly men to give voice to her words."
–Exclaim!

"Although Picastro’s lineup, instrumentation and sound have shifted over time since they started just over 20 years ago, the Toronto band’s voice has stayed strong and consistent. At any given time, whether Picastro is currently constituted towards the more abrasive or pastoral end of their personal spectrum, whether it’s a few people or a larger ensemble, whether it’s acoustics or electronics (or both), even through the kind of gaps you tend to get with long-running bands that mostly fly under the radar, Picastro (and more specifically mainstay Liz Hysen) have kept the same gloriously dark, compellingly rich tone, however it’s expressed. With the band’s lineup over the past few years stable and among the best Picastro has ever been, it’s perhaps inevitable that the often restless Hysen would take that stronger structure and try out an experiment she’s been considering for years: mostly removing her own voice from the equation in favor of others."
–Dusted