1st June 2022
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s not often I’m on the fence, but here I am, the splynters stabbing into my arse. Opening bars of the new single form Wylderness, taken from second album Big Plans for a Blue World (out 1 June vi Succulent Records) suggest dreamy, chyming shoegaze, but y’know, I’ve heard it a myllion tymes before doing this. And much as I lyke it, much as I dig Slowdive, Ride, Chapterhouse, and later exponents like The Early Years (criminally underrated and sadly failed to really make their mark), I have to admit that so much is wishy-washy, winsome and airy to the point of lacking in enough substance to really prove compelling.
Past the opening bars… layers and aspects reveal themselves. ‘Wet Look’ is still dreamy, wynsome, wystful, but there’s a brooding steeliness infused within it, with hints of Interpol and post-millennium post-punk, and it just nags hard enough to draw you in for a second listen. Something about that reverb, that interplay between the guitars, that spaciousness, that melancholy… sigh.
AA
Aural Aggravation 