Kevin Bronson on April 13th, 2022

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Fashion Club is the solo guise of Pascal Stevenson (of Moaning), who employs cavernous synthscapes as a canvas for intense reflections on morality, power, truth and ego.

The seeds of the project were planted in 2018 while Stevenson was on tour with Moaning, gaining momentum the following year when the L.A.-based artist got sober. “Not having that veil of intoxication all the time confronts you with an opportunity to inspect a lot of things about yourself,” says Stevenson, who acknowledged approaching the venture with some trepidation:

“I’ve been making music since I was 14, and I’ve never been the front person in a band until this one. Trying to take myself out of that behind-the-scenes role was uncomfortable at first. You have to imagine yourself completely differently. To make that shift in your mind is hard. Especially if you have built something up in your mind about how the person that fronts a band has to be perceived. It felt really good and freeing to be in control, because I trusted myself. When you get to a certain level of confidence, you can be more free.”

“Feign for Love,” released today, is the cavernous first single from Fashion Cub’s debut album, “Scrutiny,” out June 17 via Felte Records. Dreamy, dense and dark (think Zola Jesus, Drab Majesty, Bestial Mouths), the single is an incantation trapped in a vortex of synths and pummeling drums.

“This song is about my compulsion to try and hide the true meaning of my work behind layers of figurative language,” Stevenson says. “It’s also confronting the dissonance between that compulsion and the intense desire to be seen and heard that drives me to write songs in the first place.”

Max Flick directed the video, in which the artist undergoes a transformation. “The video takes that feeling of trying to create a beautiful facade to hide something hideous and makes it more tangible,” Stevenson says. “It’s this kind of placid beauty with something dark lurking underneath.”

||| Watch: The video for “Feign for Love”