The debut from this Michigan indie-pop outfit was a 6-song EP entitled The Handbag Memoirs, released way back in 2002. By listening to this first full-length album, it becomes quickly apparent why it took Pas/Cal the better part of a decade to release it. The songs are intricate, exploratory, acutely crafted with an ear for detail, and shapeshifting within the context of a larger pop context. Alternately precious along the lines of French twee, rollicking like Bowie-esque glam, and experimental in the vein of Scott Walker, I Was Raised might best be described as a cornucopia of pop. Songs incorporate everything from string breaks to whistling solos, guitar kick, and keyboard textures, often winding around melodies just long enough to present themselves before disappearing. It is an album of a thousand ideas—many times it sounds as if they are all contained in a single six-minute song, like the gorgeous “You Were Too Old For Me”—but the thing that makes Pas/Cal infinitely intriguing is the same thing that makes I Was Raised so difficult to pin down. For every comparatively simple pop song like “Little Red Radio,” there is a multi-part epic like “Glorious Ballad of the Ignored.” The constant flux can make for a challenging listen, but new pleasures will reveal themselves every time.
--Frank Valish [September 15, 2008]
