New, Improved

"It came up against many a bag of dicks flying into our face through the process of getting this one out,” Closure In Moscow frontman Christopher de Cinque suggests of the five-year incubation of the new album, “almost to the point where it felt like it was cursed or had some kind of voodoo hex. We were a bunch of elephants carrying baby elephants way past full term, and as you know, elephants gestate for quite some fucking time, and it finally feels really, really good to spew out the mutant, jewel-encrusted baby elephant that is Pink Lemonade.”

De Cinque is a colourful character, his speech flitting from free-rolling verbosity to hesitance, where you can almost hear his mental Thesaurus attempting to settle on the next word. Forming in 2006, Closure In Moscow released their debut, First Temple, in 2009, and spent most of that year touring the US. Citing “a lot of anxiety and chronic depression” coupled with “some pretty unprofessional situations”, the band also took time off after America.

“I straight-up had a nervous breakdown and had to get home. That put things to a grinding halt; we were burned out and jaded after that. Also, with a couple of line-up changes, everything just went into stasis for a little bit, and kind of had to find its feet again and reboot.”

At one stage he even thought, “I'm done, I don't want to do this anymore. That's such an easy head-trap to get into when you're in that insular universe. It's that kind of Spinal Trap syndrome when you're in that band universe bubble, and it's hard to pull out of and go, 'Wait a sec, you're just a person in a band, you're not fighting climate change, come on.'”

Closure In Moscow is a band reborn. While some threads of their original style remain, the realms of obscure, psychedelic creativity are much more voraciously explored on their latest offering. The album's title came “like a bolt from the blue”, and was “completely coincidentally” validated by the accidental viewing of the pink lemonade scene in The Sound Of Music. Conceptually and artistically, the band appears to be flagrantly not giving a fuck, while simultaneously giving more of a fuck than ever before.

“Pink Lemonade is a symbol for a tacky, shitty, quick-fix that promises more than what it is. The character on the front of the album is offering this pink lemonade as a shortcut to enlightenment, curing all your woes, and closing the chasm of despair that's in a lot of people trying to deal with 21st century living. As narcissism and individualism becomes more rampant, it's also creating more anxiety and depression, and culturally things are getting pretty fucking overwhelming to deal with. So it's like, 'Hey, drink the all-new sexy pink lemonade, and have all your problems melt away,' when really, it's just a shitty, gimmicky, sugary soft drink called Pink Lemonade.”