Album Notes

Ever her sister carved the words AC/DC into her forearm in reaction to her mother's household ban on heavy metal music, Pascale wondered whether any chick band could inspire the same level rebellion and insane devotion to the point where someone would say, "that band kicks so much ass, I'm gonna tattoo their name on my arm." After high school, she ditched the alto saxophone and picked up the electric guitar, taking guitar lessons from a classmate who charged $5.00 and a case of wine coolers for her trouble. Many lessons and wine coolers later, Pascale claims she still couldn't figure out the solo to Van Halen's "Eruption," but armed with three chords and some rants scrawled on a Dunkin Donuts napkin, she was ready to embark on her own rock n'roll version of Homer's Odyssey.

Not content to sit behind her spectacles in a cozy uptown office, Pascale Jean-Louis takes her psychotherapy to the stage where she advises from experience. With a voice at once slippery and severe, Diabolique's frontwoman is not afraid to dredge up or rehash the unpleasantries of life. The band's EP, Uses of Disorder, establishes Pascale as the voice of a collective urban unconscious: downtrodden, spat upon, cracked up and aching for more.

Formed in 2005, Diabolique is the culmination of each member's chops hard-won by time served in previous bands. The group succeeds in creating a sound combining buzz-saw guitars and deep grooves, and a nasty underbelly - without taking themselves too seriously. Pascale's former group Eyelash (together from 2002-2004) had gained a local following, playing around NYC at clubs including CBGB's, Arlene Grocery, Continental, Sin-e, Tribeca, Siberia, Meow Mix and Don Hills. The band was featured on the compilation CD, Audio Venus, Vol. 1, and in the Fall 2003 issue of Lollipop magazine, alongside Overkill, Napalm Death, Single Bullet Theory, and more.

Pascale ensnares the listener with hypnotic vocals reminiscent of Chrissy Hynde matched with the gaul of Courtney Love. The Village Voice says that "Pascale plays with conviction in an effort to create a new template for female musicians." MP3.com described Pascale's music as "the perfect blend of punk, pop and hard rock."

A native New Yorker, Pascale describes her city as "a lost place," painfully aware of what it once was, like a business exec in mid-life crisis. In her song "Ambition To Go," Jean-Louis follows on the heels of those who will do anything to live in "the idea of New York." And the theme of self-delusion is carried through into tunes like the whisper-to-yell "Indie Boy" in which Jean-Louis laments her having fallen for a member of that famously impenetrable subgroup. "Why don't you save yourself?" comes as the anthemic cry of "City of God," and could be the coda to Diabolique's modus operandi.

As a performer, Pascale is trying to set a new standard for women in the throes of rockdom. Still, with her raw and smarting lyrics, she is willing to show herself entirely to her audience, withholding nothing. This unique merging of undeniable command and molten vulnerability distinguishes Diabolique as the quintessential band for an injured generation, struggling to define itself. Virtuosic, tight-fitting and dripping down your sleeve.