Review Summary: Dream pop with balls.
During the hours spent with this LP I’m reminded vividly of Wild Nothing’s 2012 masterpiece,
Nocturne. Not in sound beyond a superficial level - a guitar tone here, a vocal effect there - so much as spirit, the near-identical feelings both works arouse within. The latter saw Jack Tatum navigate his own little world of intimate affairs concerning, among other things, love, longing, isolation, and substance abuse via sharp guitar and synth hooks, utterly oblivious to the presence of his audience. His wide-eyed lack of self-awareness gave those songs an extremely personal, occasionally intrusive feel akin to reading a stolen diary. Here, the boy/girl vocal duo Jeff Kandefer and Elizabeth Gimbrone are comparatively guarded. Wary of prying ears pressed to their window, they drown their voices in reverb and shove them down in the mix, favouring sonic imagery over lyrical transparency to tell the bulk of their stories. The sentiments, however, are the same.
Drowned in a Sea of Sound is
Nocturne viewed through a Vaseline-smeared lens; two records sharing one heart. Sister albums, if you will. Two sides of the same shimmering coin.
At this point there are few stones left unturned within the dream pop/shoegaze realm, and The Daysleepers wear their influences proudly on their collective sleeve; both the obvious and the not-so-much (‘Release the Kraken’, for instance, bears more than a passing resemblance to Blue Öyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’). The key, then, is refinement and execution, and that’s where they excel. The rhythm section’s muscular agility provides the structural foundation needed to allow the lush guitar, vocal, and synth textures to roam where they will. Indeed, it’s the meaty low end that occupies the driver’s seat for most of the album’s duration. Weak links? None here. Each track is crawling with earworms, enjoyable alone and out of context. Together though, they become another beast entirely. I’m reluctant to employ the all too obvious aquatic metaphor, but it’s difficult to imagine a more fitting title for this record than the one it already bears. The enormous rolling groove propelling instrumental gem ‘Space Whale Migration’ in particular hints at untold mystery and darkness within its depths. This is a record equally capable of carrying you in its idle current (‘Summerdreamer’) as it is of dumping you against its jagged rocks (‘Tiger in the Sea’). Like the ocean itself,
Drowned in a Sea of Sound is beautiful, immersive, and powerful.
