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Everything about Lowsunday seems unlikely. A shoegazer band
in 2001 seems unlikely. A shoegazer band from Pennsylvania
seems unlikely. A shoegazer band on the Projekt label seems
unlikely. But, above all, the most unlikely thing about Lowsunday
is that they pull off being a shoegazer band with such grace
and skill that the sound isn’t dated or homogenized.
"Wallpaper Room", the first track has the feel
of Swervedriver. It’s intense in nature, frustrated
in melody, but smooth in feel. This is what made the shoegazer
sound so perfect. All of these different elements and layers
that should never have come together do so to make great music.
Like most shoegazer bands of the last decade, each song by
Lowsunday seems to make a stylistic reference to another band
of the same cloth. "She Follows Rain" recalls the
quasi-pop sound of Adorable. "Zuff" begs
comparison to Disintegration-era Cure. While
it easy to pick out influences, Lowsunday don’t play
on them as much as you may expect. Every song is a consistent
abstraction of these influences, creating a sound that will
be accessible to most, but just off the mark from being successful
to a mainstream audience.
"Elevate Her" borrows it’s opening riff from
The Primitives’ song "Crash", but before
you begin to feel like you’ve been duped into listening
to trite Brit-pop, Lowsunday recover with a darker sound that’s
akin to an indie act like Idaho. Lowsunday embrace
elements from a variety of places only to see them immersed
in an aggravated state of chaotic beats and swirling guitars.
Lowsunday have a talent for providing the listener with a
familiar progression before spiraling the song into a mass
of textures and layers that find the song light years from
where it began.
Lowsunday have moments of pretension peppered throughout
the disc, but when taken for what it is, you begin to discover
that the songs have more to do with spectacular songwriting
than they do with lyrical posing. You can’t knock any
tracks on the album because while each song has it’s
own identity, the consistency of Elesgiem is unmatched.
If you ever find yourself longing for the days when the
Verve didn’t begin their name with "The",
this album is a must.
-Tyler Jacobson
Track Listing:
01. Wallpaper room
02. She Follows Rain
03. Zuff
04. Magic Memory
05. Elevate Her
06. Shine…
07. …To Sleep
08. Alone Without
09. Human
10. Closer Closer
11. Daystar
12. Disassembly
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