This album is something like progressive shoe-gaze, less soaked in reverb, with a little more clarity, and really just a creatively free and fairly unique angle to it. Worth a listen if considerate and intentional songwriting draws you in – as well as delicately hard-hitting rock backdrops.
Shoegaze
It’s a pleasure to hear music like this make a come back, it feels perfectly well suited to some reflective moment of cinema or TV drama, and yet it works equally well as the comforting embrace music fans often need on the long drive home.
There’s a driving force about this that would let it suit the long road home as much as the early morning start – the calling card of a songwriter with strong audience awareness yet still a clear & concise sense of self identity.
California’s Little Sister leads with a finely polished indie-pop set-up on this single, presenting a few distinct riffs, a notable drum-pattern, and a softly whispered vocal melody that somehow cuts through the weight and rhythm surrounding it to drive with intention and purpose.
Daniel Angelus returns this year with yet another fully introspective, creative project. Act 1 offers further insight and a musically impressive leap forwards in terms of melodic progression, instrumental set-up, and lyricism.
Stockhom’s Himmelsgräns have been a breath of fresh air to listen to this week. There’s a certain humble and quiet quality to their songwriting and to this sort of synth-pop and gentle indie-rock presentation
Instances of hope are met with softness, whereas those of frustration or turmoil are met with a much greater output of energy and instrumental expression.
The song progresses and evolves much like a short film – the intensity rises, the passion builds and subsequently explodes as the band reach their emotional peaks; united in this tightly packed moment of well-organised musical mayhem.
The band’s sound is classic, not instrumentally groundbreaking but strong enough to impress and entertain. What gives them their edge though is the songs, the approach, the heart.
Pushing the shoegaze boat out far into the creative distance, sweetsoak immerse their sound in lashings of reverb for this latest single – presenting the melodic and rhythmic qualities of rock through a dreamlike wash of warmth and lightness.
When the songwriting jumps out at you much more boldly than the genre, you know you’re onto something good. SpoonFed’s B With Me is a song that gets better and better as it moves along.
Ashley Left Last Night is far from a musically intrusive song, but it gets to you – that bass-line, the high notes in the hook, the switch from the single word to the longer-form line afterwards – it weaves its way into your consciousness for sure