Pink Avalanche

Pink Avalanche’s third album, appropriately titled III (Past/Futures Records, 2019), finds the band’s sound evolving, with an even greater focus than before on texture, repetition and harmonic exploration. While their previous 2014 album The Luminous Heart of Nowhere hearkened to the driving, bold melodic rock of their midwestern '80s-'90s indie rock brethren, III finds the lineup streamlined and their sound exploring more intimate and intricate structures.

III is the Chicago-based band’s first album since The Luminous Heart of Nowhere (Past/Futures, 2014) and its first with a 3-piece lineup — founding bassist Pete Croke moved to Puerto Rico in 2018, and rather than bring in someone new, the band decided to remain a trio, with guitarist Kortland Chase switching to bass.

Pink Avalanche began in 2011 when guitarist/vocalist Che Arthur (formerly of Atombombpocketknife) and drummer Adam Reach (The Poison Arrows) decided to rekindle a musical relationship that began in their native Alabama in the early 1990s and continued after the two relocated to Chicago in the mid-'90s. The two began work on the first Pink Avalanche album Wraiths, during which time they asked Chase and Croke to join and complete the lineup.

Wraiths was released in 2013, followed the next year by The Luminous Heart of Nowhere. Medical and personal reasons kept the band’s activity minimal in 2016 and 2017, but they were still sporadically working on music for their third album. Eventually the band, having reworked the new material after the lineup change, entered the studio in the fall of 2018 and emerged with III.