Reighnbeau – Hands

May 1, 2014 • Bridgetown Records

What a difference two years can make. Okay, so Reighnbeau really isn't that different from when they released their last album Ashes, but am I glad I took the chance to look into them again. I liked Ashes quite a bit, but Hands is a fantastic followup and one shows some great growth for the band.

It's is still a slowcore album, for sure; the lolling tempos and dragging rhythms and gloomy atmosphere is all intact, and Reighnbeau is still one of the better bands to do this particular sound that I've heard (though I've never been a huge fan of the genre anyway). Again their focus on texture rather than songwriting is probably why they appeal to me so much, but man can they ever do texture well. That's not to say their songwriting is bad; there are quite a few songs here that are actually pretty engaging when the drums and well-defined chord progressions kick in (things like the climax of "Dust" with its heavy, driving sound are especially great).

Though I think they've really improved their skills with their sound. Hands mixes their old style with this hazy, slow, drugged-out, almost-psychedelic production, landing closer to the My Bloody Valentine end of the spectrum and farther from the Slowdive end. It's a bit radical compared to the clean and empty style on Ashes—although things never get so thick as to be overbearing, there's still a sort of wall-of-sound effect going on at times. It works pretty well, though, and they really use the production to their advantage to keep songs interesting. It becomes the kind of thing where you can just sit back and get lost in the sound as it washes over you. I'm not sure how I feel about the vocals, though; they're always at a near-whisper and mixed very low, so they often get lost in the fog. But maybe that's what they were going for.

But again I'm mostly talking out my ass because I don't listen to shoegaze or slowcore very much and when I do there are about two bands I actually enjoy. But regardless, this is still something I am liking, so it's got to be at least a little good for your average slowcore fan, right? I dunno.

Have a Nice Life – The Unnatural World

February 4, 2014 • Enemies List Home Recordings

It seems like Have a Nice Life's debut Deathconsciousness was the talk of the town for ages after it came out, and the hype level for their second album has been nearly as high. Though I thought it sounded like something I'd be into at first, I couldn't really get into their first album much, and it doesn't seem like much has changed this time around.

Stylistically, Have a Nice Life toes the line between dreamy, murky shoegaze and noisy ambient, with some dark and clanky industrial beats underlying much of it and the occasional post-punk grooving. It's an interesting mix (albeit not too original in this day and age). I definitely like the more rock-like songs better ("Defenestration Song", "Unholy Life", and "Dan and Tim" remind me of maybe a more modern The Cure), although "Music Will Untune the Sky" has a great majestic droning feel to it that sets it apart.

On the whole, the album feels like the sort of music that wants to feel epic, and begs to be played loudly and consume the listener's space, but it's not really as compelling as it wishes it could be. There are plenty of solid ideas and the execution is decent, but I don't think enough of the songs are particularly strong, and it feels like Have a Nice Life doesn't have a clear picture of where they wanted to take some of their ideas, leaving a lot of the tracks to just kind of wander around aimlessly.

Don't read too much into that paragraph, though. It's definitely not a bad album, and I'd be okay with spinning it a few more times casually. But it hasn't quite won me over in the same way it's done to a lot of people. Maybe I need to back and listen to Deathconsciousness again, or just wait for their next installment.

Alcest – Shelter

January 17, 2014 • Prophecy Productions

I used to be really into Alcest and I still consider their debut to be one of my favorite albums, but over the years I've slowly been losing interest in the band. It's almost definitely due to their shift in sound over the years, from a pioneering atmospheric black metal band to the dream-pop-shoegaze sound they have now. Shelter is just another step on that road, and while I won't say they're bad at what they do, they definitely aren't nearly as interesting to me as they used to be.

This is certainly their lightest and softest work to date—if this were the first Alcest album a person heard, they'd probably have a hard time believing they used to be black metal at all, as any traces of it that were on their last two albums have finally vanished. Niege's clean, melodic vocals are still quite well-done, though, and veering more into some kind of ambient pop style with soft inflection and lots of layering (I might be hearing some female vocals in there as well). The jangly guitar lines have a bit more post-rock influence, with lots of texture and reverb; there are some decent lead melodies though. Overall, their style really doesn't sound that bad, for what it is.

But I'd be lying if I said I really enjoyed Shelter that much. It's not that I resent them switching styles—plenty of bands pull that off just fine—it's just that I'm not really a shoegaze guy at all. I was already pretty iffy about Les voyages de l'âme, and finally on this one there's simply nothing for me. I know it's still Alcest and it still sounds vaguely like Alcest, but it doesn't feel like them anymore. I guess I'm just not part of their target audience anymore.

And really, that's fine. They can make whatever music they want, really. I'm simply not really qualified to talk about it anymore, nor am I really interested. And that's just the way things go sometimes.

Airs – Gloomlights

October 31, 2011 • Music Ruins Lives

Oh no, not the dreaded double album. If I haven't made it clear before, I almost always despise rock double albums; they are almost always half-full of horrible garbage that shouldn't have been recorded in the first place. I won't say there's much I'd call garbage on Gloomlights, but it's clear that there

The band tends to genre-jump a lot on this album, and it's tough say if that's necessarily a good thing. Many of the shorter tracks lie somewhere in the shoegaze / post-punk realm, sort of like the very fuzzed-out guitars of My Bloody Valentine combined with the gloomy melodies and atmospheres of The Cure. (Admittedly I've never listened to much shoegaze in the first place, so I don't have much to compare Airs to.) The band also experiments a bit with music ranging from post-rock to stoner rock to black metal to pop-rock to drone, all with the same sort of lo-fi aesthetic.

I have to give Airs credit for managing to write so many songs in such different styles and none of them are particularly bad (except the repetitive and dull opener "Harvest Moon"), but none of them really stick out either, and the band definitely can't keep up the pace for the entire hour and forty minutes the album lasts. By the time the second disc starts up, I'm ready to call it a day. I guess that probably says more about my attention span, but still, they don't give much of a reason to stick around.

Also, this is probably just me, but I find the synthesized drums and bass guitar really distracting. Excessive reverb doesn't hide the fact that they're both quite amateur-sounding.

So I guess your enjoyment of this album hinges on how into this style you are. I'm ambivalent, so Gloomlights is listenable but definitely nothing special. Maybe others will be amazed by it, and I can understand, but not me.

5

Sun Devoured Earth – Sounds of Desolation

July 4, 2012 • self-released

Never leave it to a band to categorize themselves. I found Sun Devoured Earth through Bandcamp listed in the black metal section, but Sounds of Desolation is about as far from black metal as you can get; instead it's some sort of shoegaze thing. False advertising aside, it's a fairly decent album, although not really for me and not something I'm going to be coming back to often.

"Shoegaze" is a bit unfair, as Sun Devoured Earth clearly takes influences from all over—post-rock, contemporary folk, ambient and drone, gothic rock, etc. The end result sounds a lot like many "bedroom" post-rock bands I've heard (the combination of machine-like drum and piano lines contributes to that), albeit a bit more polished and professional-sounding. The atmosphere is nice—very floaty and ethereal, drenched in reverb with lots of echoing post-rock-style guitars and piano, topped off with enigmatic vocals buried deep within the mix. In very simple terms, it almost sounds like some sort of The Cure + My Bloody Valentine collaboration.

So it's decent-sounding, but it suffers from a significant flaw: all the songs are incredibly short. It's a weird complaint, but with this kind of music I feel like the tracks don't get any time to develop and move around—it's just one quick idea repeated a few times and then they're on to the next thing. So the album winds up as a very fast-paced listen, which I think ends up sounding a bit bizarre and consequently the album isn't terribly memorable for me.

Even if I'm not very enthusiastic and Sounds of Desolation doesn't come close to the top of the heap in terms of quality or originality, I suppose it does have its moments here and there. I can't see anyone going crazy for it, though, except perhaps a very limited audience.

5

Alcest – Les voyages de l'âme

January 6, 2012 • Prophecy Productions

Few people were looking forward to hearing new material from Alcest this year as much as me, especially after seeing them live last year. Even though Écailles de lune fell a little bit under my expectations (how can one follow up their godly debut album, anyway?) I was excited for this one. While it's a bit more of the same thing heard on the last album, it certainly isn't bad, even though it still can't stand up to the first one.

The sound on this album is pretty much identical to that of Écailles de lune—melancholy riffing with electric guitars, very basic drumming, and 99% clean vocals (Neige's awesome screaming pops up in just a couple places, and I do miss it). While it's still enjoyable, it is admittedly getting a bit generic and I feel like I can't tell the difference at all between the two albums. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is obviously up to the individual listener; I tend to see making the same album twice in a row as generally (not always) a bad thing, even if it's a really good album. Here I find myself getting bored (maybe jaded?) a bit more often than I think I ought to be (see "Beings of Light", five minutes of repetitive and generic black metal riffing).

But again, it's definitely not a bad album by any means, and Alcest probably isn't going downhill just yet. There are still some truly great moments on the album, and even if some songs seem to drag on there are points where the riffs and atmospheres are really great, such as the end of the title track, about 2:20 into "Faiseurs de mondes", or most of "Summer's Glory".

Like I said it's still nowhere as good as Souvenirs d'un autre monde and I didn't expect it to be—Alcest has gotten a bit too comfortable, perhaps, and we'll probably never hear anything diverse and interesting from them like "Tir Nan Og" anytime soon. But there's still life in the band and Les voyages de l'âme is still good, even if it's not exactly what I want from Alcest at this point.

6