shoegaze – and so she thinks

Jubilee Courts – Strip Down

admin — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 09:24:20 +0000

Starting with a gentle and ambient plucking, Strip Down from Northampton’s Jubilee Courts soon swarms around the listener with steel vocals and grinding melodies. Sparse and subdued but still making its presence felt, the influences of Joy Division and The Jesus and Mary Chain are evident. I could have done with a little more vibrancy in the lyrics, but I can imagine that with the lights down in a smoke fug filled room (not that this ever happens any more) the effect would be intoxicating. (I write this on a sunny Sunday morning, probably not its ideal home). Sway and sashay, gaze at your shoes, with a mood on.

The Janitors – Drone Head

admin — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 08:30:41 +0000

Slow building buzzy affairs, Swedish duo The Janitors and their tunes, available for you now on new album Drone Head, are surprisingly catchy for such druggy looping riffs. Death Song bursts with vibrancy in a way that reminds of tamer The Wytches and Long Way Back has an actual sing along chorus, perfect for driving. Mesmerising and absorbing, they take a single sound or sonic couplet, repeat to fade, adding in all sorts of glitches and gloops and loops, a la Do It Again, to keep your attention as you and they gaze into the haze. Don’t be fooled by the or the shaking skiffle on A-Bow – it will erupt, and when it does it’s the finest stomping song you have heard in at least thirty years. Final track on Drone Head is called Nevereverism which sounds like a great name for the tready trippy shoegaze psychedelia sound they have. Now we have a name, the scene must be along soon.
[bandcamp width=350 height=470 album=2717219757 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 notracklist=true]

Coves – Beating

admin — Tue, 01 Oct 2013 13:23:24 +0000

Beautiful strings and sketchy beats, glitchy synths and soaring wails, soft cooing vocals and powerful assertions, vulnerable verses and acidic cutting choruses, on new song Beating Coves have taken every genre, every sound, every tactic, every noise, thrown them together without depleting the power of the individual but making every single one greater than the some of its parts. At three minutes in we are treated to what sounds like swooning woodwind, which has no right to be there, but works gloriously. Robust and rousing, it grows into a mystifying blooming crescendo, the disintegrating relationship Beck Wood sings off dissipating into an ethereal and energetic spacey tune. Bubbling with hiss, crackling synths, its full of disintegrating snarls and giddy intensity, all delivered with cinematic sleekness. Some shoegaze, C86, dreampop, disco, goth, psychedelia, everything we have come to expect from Coves since their formation in 2011, and their debut EP Cast A Shadow which was released last year is here to full effect. Just fantastic
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2mG7yoW3Ak&w=420&h=315]

The Capsules – Northern Lights & Southern Skies

admin — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:01:04 +0000

Released June 14th 2013

Northern Lights & Southern Skies, the new album from The Capsules, sounds as though it was recorded in a smooth wind tunnel, floating chilled dance, good Saturday evening warm up in the sun or Sunday afternoon thinking back to the night before kind of music. Wistful and whimsical yet fully rooted in beats and electronica, occasionally flipping into what seems like a darker textural edge simmering underneath. The output of married couple Julie and Jason, who met at high school and started playing music together when everyone else was following the rules and doing homework, the sleepless nights and pensive reveries seem to have paid off on this album.