There has never been a better time to be a fan of shoegaze rock. Not only do you have access to the entire catalogues of the scene's foundational elders - Slowdive, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, etc,. - but there are brilliant new albums emerging all the time, Maria Somerville's Luster in April, Wisp's If Not Winter just last month. And while only certain songs on their respective debuts could accurately be bracketed within the genre, both Rocket's forthcoming R Is For Rocket and Die Spitz's Something To Consume benefit from shoegaze influences.
Arguably then, there's never been a better time for Leuven quartet Slow Crush to release a new record. The Belgian quartet's vocalist/bassist Isa Holliday says that the overarching themes on the band's third long-player Thirst deal with “the fragility of human connection, and the complexity of love and self-identity”, and while it's unlikely that her lyrics are the first thing that a listener will latch on to, given that her vocals are swathed in effects and buried in the mix, there's a sense throughout the record of drifting and dislocation, distancing and dreams of soft embraces.
Truthfully it's not vital that every meaning is unpicked: in a press statement accompanying Thirst, the band say "We want to let people take a moment for themselves and let the music take them wherever they would like to go." It's a record that you feel, and as such, it's full of wonderful little details - the saxophone that brilliantly cuts through the mist on Covet, the beautiful guitar harmonies providing a bed for Holliday's exquisite vocals on Haven, the way the drums hold back and drag on Bloodmoon. There's a vulnerability to the sound, but strength too, evoking a refusal to settle or submit when you instinctively know that you're worth more. It peaks superbly with close-on-six-minutes closer Hlýtt, the Icelandic word for 'warm', which sounds like Deafheaven jamming with Sigur Rós. And if that idea doesn't get you excited, then you're either reading the wrong review, or already dead.
