You’ll find this album described as being the beginnings of “shoegaze” style indie. While we’ve had acts before that use a wall of feedback, shoegaze is characterised broadly by low-key vocals and a slight sense of disconnect, like the band are only barely managing to bother finishing a song. Not in a bad way, understand. Like “glam” is characterised as much by the stage personas of the performers as any particular musical elements, so, to me, shoegaze is as much about a band that perform from somewhere within a fog of dry ice, the lights elsewhere and not directly on the performers. It’s the musicians who are looking down at their feet as much as the audience.
That said, the album tends predominantly to this kind of musical style towards the end, sounding more like the likes of Ride with tracks like You Never Should and I Can See It (But I Can’t Feel It), grinding guitar feedback noise with vocals from Kevin Shields and Bilinda [sic] Butcher that are almost sighed rather than sung.
Earlier on in the album, though, they are a lot more avant-garde. Somewhere in the middle, the track No More Sorry is super dramatic, with what sounds like rolling timpanis, unusual big orchestral noise rather than guitar noise. Often, especially on the album opener Soft As Snow, Butcher plays her guitar like she is simple banging the strings. There’s a certain Captain Beefheart feel where time signatures and keys of the individual elements don’t quite match; drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig plays some unusual time signatures, makes disturbing pauses in the beat that gives the whole sound a slightly awkward and dissonant quality that takes some getting used to.
This is all, I think, a good thing; it feels at first a little like My Bloody Valentine don’t quite know what they’re doing, sounding more the The Shaggs, but then as the album begins to pull together it all feels right, definitely an album that rewards re-listening. Musing on it, I think that slightly uncomfortable quality makes them stand out from other wall-of-noise bands; it’s easy enough to do that kind of music should you so wish but it can sound quite monotonous for a whole album – at least with these guys you never know exactly what you’ll get.
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