Music Reviews

So yeah, you could say, I’m pretty late to the party with this one.

I mean what can I say about this album that hasn’t been said in the last like what, 9 months since it’s been out? That it’s the best shoegaze album to come out all year and for some people even just the best album any genre to come out all year? For some stupid unexplainable reason I’ve been avoiding this album like the plague since it first came out back in February this year and man, was I missing out. The opening track „Beautiful Dream“ has been in constant rotation the past few weeks and just few days back it finally pushed me to the point where I wanted to hear the whole album – and yeah, it’s pretty much as good as everyone’s been making it out to be, if not better. I mean good shoegaze, like really well-made shoegaze just does something to you, it’s kind of otherworldly.

Anyways one of the few criticisms I’ve heard being tossed towards this album was that throughout it’s runtime it’s all pretty one-note and while that may be the case, I honestly see this is as more of a strength than anything else – just look at albums like „SUNBATHER“ by Deafheaven – that album is basically all one-note and it’s one of my favorite albums OF ALL TIME. There is a sort of catharthic feeling that comes with this kind of music – it’s so over-bearing an larger than life, that it gives you this feeling of hope and more than anything makes you feel ALIVE. And that’s exactly my expirience with this album – it transports me into a whole different dimension for one whole hour. The album cover expresses that feeling better than anything I could write here honestly – it makes you just feel free. Anyway the tracklisting consists of about 10 different songs, that aren’t all perfect to be fair, I think the album’s last leg kind of dips in quality a bit, that free feeling just isn’t as strong here as it is on some of the earlier tracks – speaking of those tracks though, GOD DAMN, they really set the bar high to be fair. „Beautiful World“ is in one word just beautiful (that’s constructive criticism right here ladies and gents), „Excuse“ and „Analog Sentimentalism“ both are just gorgeous and dare I say both quite underrated in the album – the true hidden gem though comes in the form of the 10-minute long magnum opus of this album „White Ceiling“, which never gets even a little boring throughout it’s whole runtime. The title track serves as a nice break from that behemoth of a track and leads nicely into „Age of Fluctuation“, the second longest track on the album, which doesn’t quite reach the levels of genius that White Ceiling did, but still is a nice piece to the puzzle nonethenless – the follow-up song „Youth Rebellion“ is also one of my personal favorites on here, the title kind of speaks for itself honestly, no song describes the feeling of being young and rebellious better than this one does. „Extra Story“ is definetly the worst track on here, it sort of breaks the immersion that this album creates for no reason and it might be the sole reason why I don’t enjoy the last two tracks on this album as much as the others – but it’s not like it completely ruins the album expirience, it’s just kind of out of place, that’s all. Now the last two tracks „Chicken“ and „I Can Feel My Heart Touching You“ are still great, don’t get me wrong, but I feel as though they don’t take that extra step like the other tracks did to make them really just breath-taking. Still both good tracks that wrap up the album pretty nicely.

So yeah, this album absolutely slays at all fronts – one of the most magical expiriences I had with music this year, definetly blasting this for the days to come.

Decent 9/10