Review Summary: shoegaze EP
The Artist has died a thousand deaths over every form, medium or genre you could ever imagine, but has any of these have been half so grisly, so slow, so irresuscitable as the fate they met on the hill of contemporary shoegaze? Don't answer. I've long since made my peace with 2020s gaze being so functionally interchangeable that the wheat sorts itself from the chaff. Get hung up on old templates and homogeneity, and you've missed the point – the appeal is more like regaining some lost childhood idyll where it's possible to tell your favourite bands from your non-favourites simply by which ones like you more (imagine!) Little else matters.
Anyway, I like Glixen. They're one of a handful of new-ish bands who seem to understand the genre fundamentals well enough to eschew any snivelling critical concerns about innovation or "the" "wheel" – or at least they did before the ultra-turgid new EP they dropped last week, but that's another story. Their debut
She Only Said lays claim to every worthwhile shoegaze trope with pride, from its mournful headrush ("Splendor"), to its unabashed syrup-bomb ("Adore") and straining heartache ("Moodswing"), and even as far as a 90s-style catatonic washout ("My Blue Heaven"). Their blend of ethereal tones is finely gauged, neither too crisp nor too muddy; they are diffused by dynamic performances and imbue the EP's vast liminal space with enough organic qualities to support any healthy lifeform. Case in point, vocalist Aislinn Ritchie lives and breathes in this mix: her contributions rarely take centre stage, but they are pronounced and tuneful enough to serve the aesthetic as well as any other layer – any background mumbling is kept to a minimum. The whole band benefit from a quiet confidence across the board – if there's any novelty still to be had in playing a tired genre right, they seem to care little for it either way. So much the better.
