Gothober - doused : "Murmur"

 Shoe gaze if it is dark enough can cross over into what we are listening for here this month. It opens much darker with an instrumental than when they kick into their more standard songs.   The muffled vocals against the sonic wall they kick up is brighter than most post punk, but you can hear how the Cure has influenced this genre of the years. There is a post rock feel to the guitars, but it has the more dream poppish straight ahead drive on "Strawberry Blonde" .  By the time we get to " Ease' there is now a uniformity to their sound. Some dynamic ebb and flow exists when they stomp around from loud to soft. Here it is executed with a great deal of power.   

Wish that they made an entire song out of "II" rather than it just being a passing interlude, as it has t he sounds I want more of. They veer more into this direction and indulge themselves to bathe in atmosphere for "Again" while keeping the song moving, with drums that drive the song rather than allowing it to drift and drone on the sonic waves.  "Dizzy" takes this vibe and pounds it out harder while drowning it in an array of crazy space sounds until it explodes into noise. While two and a half minutes long, the instrumental focus of "Swirl" just drones off one sound so it feels more like an interlude than a song. This is my one complaint about the album is there are cool sounds that I feel like these kids are more than capable of evolving into songs, but instead they just left things as they were rather than cultivating it into something more, which might be something they just have to grow into. 

The first time we get into a more boozy warble that brings My Bloody Valentine to mind is on the title track that closes the album. This song if we are going to think of it as such , starts off with a well balanced feel offering melody against the more Bloody sonics. Then it just kind of drops out into a piano piece that takes the song out. Here it feels like there was another missed opportunity to do more. I think this is a great band with a tremendous amount of potential they might still grow into, even if they remain where they are it is still marvelous enough work for me to give this album a 9.